Dr Elsa Panciroli is a palaeobiologist from the Scottish Highlands, who studies the early origins and evolution of mammals. She is a NERC Independent Research Fellow at National Museums Scotland, and Chair of the Scottish Geology Trust. She is also an Associate Researcher at the University of Birmingham, and previously completed a Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford.

Her work centres on fossils she has helped discover during regular fieldwork on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. She has published scientific articles on subjects including mammals, reptiles, dinosaurs, fossil footprints, salamanders and the history of science, and has taught classes at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh on topics in evolutionary biology, zoology, palaeontology and scientific visualisation.

Elsa has written two books, both of which received praise in the press. Her debut, Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution, (Bloomsbury Sigma, June 2021) was described in The New York Times as “smart, passionate and seditious”. Her “extraordinarily accessible and informative” second book, The Earth: A Biography of Life came out in 2022 (Quercus Greenfinch).

She is a graduate of the BBC Academy Expert Women training programme, and has appeared on radio, television and podcasts including BBC Crowdscience, The John Beatty Show, The Nine, and Our Lives. From 2016-2018 she was a regular paid contributor for the Guardian, and has also written articles for BBC Science Focus, Biological Sciences Review and The Scotsman, among other in-print and online magazines and journals.

She was a judge and co-organiser of the Hugh Miller Writing Competition, and co-edited an anthology of geological-themed writing, Conversations in Stone. She gives talks about science to people of all ages and backgrounds, including geological societies, schools and as an invited speaker at festivals, conferences and events, including New Scientist Live.

Her next book, Survival of the Unfittest, will be published by John Murray and Harper Wave in 2025.

Imogen Willetts is a Creative Producer and University Lecturer.

She worked at the Royal Academy of Arts in London for eight years, where she led its cultural programmes of live events and festivals. This included leading the sell-out RA Lates series, after-hours gallery events that reimagined the nightlife behind iconic artistic movements, as well as an annual summer party that took inspiration from Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Imogen has an academic background in cultural and urban history.  She lectures at Kingston University’s School of Art and guest lectures at Central Saint Martins.

Her first book, Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife, will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK in 2025/6.

Oliver Milman is a British journalist and the environment correspondent at the Guardian. He lives in New York City.

His first book, The Insect Crisis, is a devastating account of how a silent collapse in worldwide insect populations is threatening everything from the birds in our skies to the food on our plates. It was published by Atlantic in 2022 and shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing.

Grace is represented by Sally in the UK on behalf of Zoë Pagnamenta at The Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. 

Larisa Brown has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, covering the Middle East region and wider issues on defence, security, diplomacy and politics. She is currently Defence Editor at The Times and also covers security and diplomacy for the Sunday Times. Her work has taken her to multiple conflict zones, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine and Libya and she was posted to Beirut, Lebanon for a short period in 2018. Larisa is a British Journalism Awards Campaign of the Year winner for her work highlighting the plight of Afghan interpreters.

Her first book, The Gardener of Lashkar Gah, was published by Bloomsbury in September 2023. By telling one family’s bittersweet experience, this book provides a unique and powerful insight into the devastating effects of the end of the disastrous ‘War on Terror’.