Journalist, writer and lecturer. Her postgraduate research at Imperial College, London, and in University of Cambridge, explore how Victorian gardeners made use of new scientific ideas.

As Emma Townshend she was the Independent on Sunday‘s gardening columnist for 10 years, and for almost two decades now she has been part of the team of volunteer tour guides at Kew, interpreting the Gardens for visitors.

Plant, garden and social historian. A fellow of the Linnean Society, and an Ambassador for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. She teaches Garden History at the University of Oxford.

Advolly’s new book ‘A Short History of Flowers: The stories that make our gardens,’ was published in March 2024.

She presents garden history features on BBC`s Gardener’s World, and produces The Garden History Podcast and is a Scribehound Gardening columnist.

Medieval Manuscripts Specialist at Cambridge University Library. Prior to this he worked in various capacities in the Manuscripts and Rare Books Departments at the British Library.

He also serves as Assistant Editor for the Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, and as Chair of the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections.

James was the Principal Investigator of the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries digitisation project and curated Curious Cures: Medicine in the Medieval World.

Teaching Associate at the University of Cambridge's English Faculty and a Fellow at Churchill College. She was previously a Research Fellow at the London Science Museum. Her research explores the interplay of literary, practical, and magical discourses in the late Middle Ages.

Her first book, Middle English Medical Recipes and Literary Play, explored the linguistic and imaginative connections between medieval medical writings and literature by Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Malory and others.