Benjamin Gearey is lecturer in environmental archaeology, University College Cork, with a wide range of research interests focused on wetland and especially peatland environments. He is PI for the ongoing IRC COALESCE funded project IPeAAT, and was CO-I for the recently completed EU Joint Planning Initiative/Cultural Heritage funded project ‘WetFutures’ and other IRC funded projects.
He is a member of the United Nations Global Peatlands Initiative and an elected member of the JPICH Scientific Advisory Committee with expertise in past climate change. He is editor of The Journal of Wetland Archaeology and has published extensively on aspects of peatland heritage, environmental change and human impact, in peer reviewed journals and books, including the recently published ‘An Introduction to Peatland Archaeology and Palaeoenvironments’ (Oxbow Books, 2023).
Maureen O’Connor is a lecturer at the School of English and Digital Humanities in University College Cork. “I am an Irish Studies scholar, specializing in women’s writing, from the late nineteenth century to today. Much of my work is ecofeminist analysis, including my first book, The Female and the Species: The Animal in Irish Women’s Writing.”
Dr Rosie Everett is a Lecturer in Forensic Science at Northumbria University with a specialist interest in forensic ecology and environmental trace evidence. As a former environmental archaeologist, she has research experience and interest in past environmental archives (pollen, diatoms) for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction with a focus on peatlands and peatland heritage. She has worked with government bodies and NGOs to develop policy and action to support peatland restoration groups and communities in the management and protection of peatland heritage in the face of climate change.