Orla Shortall is an academic, writer and knowledge exchange practitioner. She works as an agricultural social scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen where her research focuses on farmer decision making and change within agriculture. She held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2018-2021 entitled "Cows eat grass, don’t they?" exploring the role of grass and grazing in dairy farming in the UK and Ireland.
Orla enjoys communicating academic ideas to the public: she hosted academic shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on the topic of dairy farming and performs stand up comedy about her work. She also runs the popular Speakin’ Weird spoken word night in Aberdeen. Orla’s forthcoming narrative non-fiction book about dairy farming published by September Publishing aims to connect dairy and non-dairy milk drinkers with the people and animals who make milk.
Orla is from the Republic of Ireland and has lived in the UK since 2009.
Agent: Doug Young