Richard Oram is Professor of Medieval and Environmental History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling. A graduate of the University of St Andrews (MA (Hons) Mediæval History with Archaeology and PhD Mediæval History), he joined the University of Stirling in 2002. His research focuses on secular and ecclesiastical lordship and architecture in the medieval and early renaissance periods, on historic climate change and subsistence crises in the North Atlantic region, and on the social and cultural responses to epidemic disease in the Middle Ages. He has published widely on issues of land, lordship and environment, cultural resilience and climate-driven change in late medieval Scotland, and on energy supply crises and fuel transitions in the period c.1150-c.1850. He is a former council-member of the Historic Environment Advisory Council for Scotland.