The Saltire Society Team

Susan has been active with the Saltire Society since 1998. In her career she worked in book businesses, local government and the arts and culture voluntary sector. She founded Gaelforce, which grew to be the largest
community arts festival in Scotland, and was creative producer for the Creative Mackintosh Festival and the 2017 Borders Heritage Festival. Susan has also been a trustee for Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival and for Alchemy Film and Arts.

Ian is a writer and academic. He is Emeritus Professor in Drama (Kingston University, London), a Scottish Literature Honorary Senior Research Fellow (Glasgow University) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was Dean of Arts at Queen Margaret University and previously held roles in organisations including the British Council and Arts Council of Great Britain. Ian writes poetry and plays, and is active as an editor and writer of academic work including the Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature.

Gerry holds the Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish
Literature at Glasgow University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is General Editor of OUP’s Collected Works of Robert Burns, and his other interests include Muriel Spark, Walter Scott and the Scottish Enlightenment. Gerry is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature and was the first elected Fellow of the World Burns
Federation.

Jameela read English at London University, law at Edinburgh
University and taught English in schools for twenty years. She has contributed to reviews in ‘Bottle Imp’ and to ‘Gitanjali and Beyond’, a peer-reviewed journal on Rabindranath Tagore.
As a writer, Jameela’s poems have been anthologised in ‘Thali Katori’, and as a translator she has a specific interest in Scottish literature, Urdu and minority languages.

John is the Saltire Society Edinburgh Branch Convenor. In his career, John was a civil servant in the Departments of the Environment and Transport, and spent 26 years working in Scotland’s railways, latterly leading ScotRail’s adopt a station programme. On retiring in January 2017 he became an Honorary Rail Ambassador. John serves as Chair of  Murrayfield Community Council, and from 2004 to 2007 was CILT’s Scottish Region Chairman.

Morag Gray started her career in the racing industry in 1988 at Ayr and Hamilton Park, where she became the first female Clerk of the Course in Britain. She spent ten years at the Racecourse Association, latterly as Racing Director, and was a founder member of the National Joint Pitch Council. From 2000 to 2004 she was Chief Executive of Hamilton Park Racecourse. She joined the British Horseracing Association as Independent Director in 2007. Morag was awarded an MBE for services to Racing in 2005. She remains active in racing and is also a trustee of the Scottish Flag Trust.

Duncan is the Saltire Society Glasgow Branch Convenor. Duncan was the first Executive Director of Caritas Scotland. He then joined Caritas Internationalis at the Vatican as Head of International Programmes, and served as Secretary General of the Confederation from 1999 to 2007.  Thereafter he entered academia, establishing programmes in international development studies in Australia where he lived for several years. Duncan was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Francis in 2016 and is a lay member of the Dominican Order. He serves on the Scottish Bishops’ Committee on Inter-religious Dialogue.

Nikki was Executive Producer/CEO at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and before that at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. She set up a touring theatre company after graduating from Bradford University and has also worked for the Traverse Theatre, Scottish International Children’s Festival, The Catstrand, the year-long festival Manchester City of Drama 1994, as Business Manager at West End producer PW Productions, as well as Arts Council of Great Britain and as a Drama Officer at Creative Scotland. She was Administrator for the Creative Writing courses and then Head of Administration for the School of Critical Studies at Glasgow University. She is Treasurer of Association for Scottish Literature and previously on boards of Scottish Enterprise Tayside, Ballet West, Heartland Radio Foundation, Major Road Theatre Company, International Workshop Festival Ltd, Stellar Quines.