Roger Davidson M.A., Cert. Ed., Ph.D, F.R.Hist.S. is Professor Emeritus in History at Edinburgh University. He was born in 1942. He graduated in history from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge in 1964, where he also undertook his doctorate during 1967-70. He was appointed to a Lectureship in Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh in 1970, and was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1984, Reader in 1996, and to a Personal Chair in Social History in 2002. Davidson is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a former Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and a registered practitioner of the Higher Education Academy. He was editor of Social History of Medicine from 2000 to 2004 and a former member of the Scottish Records Advisory Council.