Miriam C. Davis

Miriam Davis is an expert in medieval history and archaeology. After graduating from Emory University, Miriam studied history and archaeology at the University of St Andrews on a Bobby Jones Scholarship. She went on to earn an MA in medieval archaeology from the University of York on a Fulbright grant, and a Ph.D. in medieval history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has participated in archaeological excavations in Mississippi, Alabama, England, and Scotland. Currently, Miriam is a freelance writer. She has written for the popular press on archaeology, history, and travel and has lectured throughout the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel. Her work has also been featured on The Travel Channel. As a history professor at Delta State University for 16 years, she taught a wide variety of courses, including ancient and medieval history, the Renaissance and Reformation, English history, and the history of Christianity. Miriam is the author of Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land and The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story. She has served as a Smithsonian Journeys Expert for trips since 2011.

Rab Houston

Professor Rab Houston was an undergraduate at St Andrews and, after six years in Cambridge as a research student and research fellow, came back as a lecturer in Modern History in 1983. He has held visiting professorships at the universities of Adelaide and Erasmus, Rotterdam as well as visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library and the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Between 2006 and 2009 he held a prestigious Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Member of the Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Rab has written ten books, co-authored one, and edited another four as well as authoring eighty articles and book chapters, most of them in the fields of early modern British and European literacy, British demography and urbanisation, Scottish society, and the history of mental abnormality.

Outside academia Rab is a keen scuba diver, often to be seen diving wrecks off the east coast of Scotland – or visiting warmer waters around the world. He enjoys yoga and Tai Chi, both active forms of meditation.

Katherine Forsyth

Katherine Forsyth grew up in the north-east of Scotland where she developed a fascination with the early medieval inhabitants of the region – the Picts – and their remarkable stone sculptures. She pursued this interest at the University of Cambridge, and then Harvard University, where she gained a PhD in Celtic Languages and Literatures. After research fellowships at the University of Oxford and University College London, she moved to the University of Glasgow’s department of Celtic and Gaelic, where she has taught since 1998. Katherine has published extensively on various aspects of Pictish studies and on sculpture in Scotland and Ireland, having conducted field-work there and in the Isle of Man and Brittany. She has particular expertise in the field of inscriptions, and her current research interests include the relationships between stone monuments, landscape and memory, and an inter-disciplinary study of Celtic board-games. Katherine has acted as academic consultant on the display of early medieval sculpture at a number of sites, including Iona, and worked with contemporary artists who seek to engage with Scotland’s ancient art. When she’s not thinking about old stones she likes to dance Argentine Tango.

Cassandra Potts Hannahs

Cassandra Potts Hannahs is a historian with special expertise in Celtic, Viking, and Anglo-Norman studies. She has enjoyed traveling with Smithsonian Journeys on more than 50 tours and cruises, sharing her passion and knowledge of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.

With a Ph.D. in medieval history, she was a tenured professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she taught courses on a wide range of subjects, from ancient history through the Reformation.  A Fulbright scholar and recipient of several grants, she has also spent considerable time living in France pursuing research.  Her publications include a book exploring the Viking settlement of Normandy in northern France during the 10th and 11th centuries, and the revival of monasticism that took place as the new rulers encouraged monks to return to the region after the Viking raids. 

In her research and lectures, Cassandra explores the cultural and political exchanges that have historically linked Britain, France, Ireland, and Scandinavia. She looks forward to sharing her love and knowledge of these lands, their history, music, and literature, with Smithsonian Journeys travelers.