Breandán Knowlton is the Executive Director of Historypin, a global community of people who gather and share the history of the places that matter to them. Using Historypin, volunteer-led projects use collections of photographs, documents, sounds and moving images to start conversations and trigger memories. Created in partnership with Google in 2011, Historypin consists of a web platform, mobile applications and a series of local community projects that together increase local social capital and reduce social isolation.

A former programme manager at the Europeana digital museum project, Breandán believes passionately in the potential of democratic digital technologies to transform the relationship between people and their heritage and identity. In addition to Europeana, Breandán has held management positions at BearingPoint, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and other large and small organisations over the past two decades.

His career has included senior positions in technical architecture, software development and project management, and thanks to some great teams his projects have generally finished on time and on budget. He holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Limerick, and is pursuing a PhD in that subject. (He also likes playing traditional Irish music with friends.) Breandán has written a book on project management, “A Practical Guide
to Managing Web Projects”, published by Five Simple Steps, and is now working on a second book.