Michael Potterton is a Lecturer and Director of the MA in Local History in the Department of History at Maynooth University. He is Chair of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas and one of two Irish representatives on the International Commission for the History of Towns. He is a member of the editorial board of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, is the Series Editor of Maynooth Studies in Local History and is Principal Investigator on the RIA-funded Moynagh Lough Project. Michael worked for seven years as a Senior Research Archaeologist with the Discovery Programme and a further seven years as Editor with Four Courts Press. He is a Director of Dublinia and the Medieval Trust and in 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Among his extensive list of publications are (with Margaret Murphy) Dublin Region in the Middle Ages (2010) and (as co-editor with Christiaan Corlett), The town in medieval Ireland in the light of recent archaeological excavations (2020).