Ian Adamson

Who is Ian Adamson?

Cllr Ian Adamson OBE is a former Lord Mayor of Belfast. He is a member of the Ulster Unionist Party and is a retired medical doctor.

A Councillor on Belfast City Council from 1989 until 2011, Adamson was Lord Mayor in 1996.

He studied at Bangor Grammar School then Queen's University Belfast becoming a registrar in pediatrics at the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children and the Ulster Hospital.

He speaks ten languages, including Scots, Lakota Sioux and Swahili. He is founder Chair of the Ulster-Scots Language Society, and remains a Vice-President. In liaison with Professor Robert Gregg in 1992, he founded the Ulster-Scots Academy.

He is the author of several books on subjects such as folk poetry, history and religion. He is the author of The Cruthin, laying claims to Ulster descent from a pre-Gaelic people in Ireland. He also wrote The Identity of Ulster, and other works dealing with the ethnology of a group of pre-Celtic settlers in Ulster whose mentality is said to pervade the modern province.

He is President of Belfast Civic Trust, founder Chair of The Somme Association, founder Secretary of the Farset Youth and Community Development, Belfast. Adamson is also a former member of the Boards of many other local public sector and voluntary organisations, including The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Ulster Museum, The Titanic Trust, The Eastern Health and Social Services Board, The Ultach Trust and a serving Brother, Venerable Order of Saint John.