Chris Atherton is an English teacher, Linguist, Head of Department and Research Lead at Sir John Deane's Sixth Form College in the North West of England. His geeky academic interests are cultural evolution, linguistics and cognitive science. In his spare time he enjoys open water swimming, cooking and building pizza ovens.

Val Poultney is a senior lecturer at the University of Derby. She teaches on initial teacher education and postgraduate programmes. Her research interests include school leadership and school governance with a particular focus on how to develop leadership to support teachers as researchers.