Jane Draycott is a Roman historian and archaeologist, and the author of Cleopatra’s Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen and Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome. She investigates science, technology, and medicine in the ancient world, and is particularly interested in the history and archaeology of medicine; impairment, disability, and prostheses; and botany and horticulture. Recently, she has begun exploring the use (and abuse) of history and archaeology in video games, particularly those set in classical antiquity. She has also long had a special interest in Graeco-Roman Egypt and the Roman client kingdom of Mauretania. She was awarded a BA (Hons) in Archaeology and Ancient History and an MA in Ancient History from Cardiff University, an MSc in Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology from Cranfield University, and a PhD in Classics from the University of Nottingham. Following the completion of her doctorate, she was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships: Rome Fellow at the British School at Rome and Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Research Fellow in Classics at the University of Glasgow. and co-director of the University of Glasgow’s Games and Gaming Lab. Her research has been funded by organisations including the AHRC, the Wellcome Trust, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She has written books, book chapters, and articles on a range of subjects related to ancient history and archaeology for both specialist and non-specialist readership. Her academic publications include the monographs Prosthetics and Assistive Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome, Approaches to Healing in Roman Egypt and Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy from the Middle Republic to the Early Empire, and the edited volumes Bodies of Evidence: Ancient Anatomical Votives Past, Present and Future, Prostheses in Antiquity, Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games, and Women in Classical Video Games. She has discussed aspects of her research on television and radio, in vidcasts, and in podcasts. When she is not reading, writing, or thinking about Roman history and archaeology, she enjoys indulging her wanderlust by travelling to interesting places, playing computer games, cooking vegan food, practising yoga and hooping. She lives in Glasgow with a tyrannical Norwegian Forest Cat named Magnus, and is currently renovating a dilapidated Victorian house. You can find her on Twitter as @JLDraycott, Bluesky as @jldraycott.bsky.social‬, and Instagram as jane.draycott.

Mary-Jane Riley spent many years as a BBC journalist, presenting magazine programmes on BBC radio in the Eastern Counties and has covered some of the major crime stories of the past twenty years. She has carried out hundreds of interviews and her talks with Ruth Rendell and PD James encouraged her to begin writing crime fiction. Mary-Jane has combined her writing career with working for the Royal Literary Fund (RLF). As a Fellow of the charity she has supported students at Cambridge University, helping them to put their sometimes complex ideas and theories into clear, accessible writing. During her Fellowship, Mary-Jane contributed to a number of RLF podcasts and website articles. After publishing four crime novels, Mary-Jane is now writing a series set in post Second World War Europe with a covert operative for GCHQ as the heroine. She is married and has three grown-up children and a golden retriever. She lives in rural Suffolk.

Joanne Clague writes historical saga set in Victorian Sheffield. The Ragged Valley, the first in a series published by Canelo, is out on June 2 2022 in paperback and ebook.

Nikki worked for many years as a financial journalist. She now writes fiction from a small village near Amersham. Her first novel, On Wilder Seas, was shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society’s New Novel Award and selected for the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation’s #AdventureSociety book club. Her second novel, Lilith, inspired by the myth of Adam’s first wife in the Garden of Eden, was published in October 2023.