Blog is written by Claire Taylor, a final year English and Modern History undergraduate student. After being awarded the Laidlaw Research and Leadership Scholarship, she researched the role of women and questions of gender within the Esperanto movement in Britain. This transnational and gender history project uncovered a range of local women from Scotland engaging with Esperanto, including doctors, chemists, dressmakers, and journalists. She continues to work on the multidimensional experiences of Scottish women Esperantists and is a curator of Esperanto Wor(l)ds: Scotland, Postcards, and the Creation of an International Language on display at the Wardlaw Museum of the University of St Andrews until 29 May 2023. Read her work on Scottish women Esperantists here.
Started in February 2023, Hot Girl Histories explores women’s histories and queer histories normally not found in textbooks. Join Claire, an English and Modern History undergraduate student at the University of St Andrews and an aspiring academic girlboss, on her journey to bring life to the unspoken histories of girls, gays, and non-binary slays. A podcast made by and for the aforementioned parties. New episodes are uploaded every Mondayish.
A recent episode features a discussion with Dr. Bernhard Struck and Dr. Guilherme Fians, both faculty from the School of History, on the Esperanto Wor(l)ds: Scotland, Postcards, and the Creation of an International Language exhibition. This exhibition zooms into the lives of several Scottish Esperanto speakers in the early twentieth century, particularly the lives of John Beveridge and his family. A Presbyterian clergyman, John Beveridge used Esperanto to exchange correspondence on topics ranging from Christianity and Scandinavian history to beekeeping. Following the traces of his postcards, this exhibition brings you to as many places as this language and these letters brought John Beveridge, and his daughters Lois and Heather Beveridge, at a time when international travel was still a luxury, the internet did not exist, and when having pen pals from abroad was an exciting adventure. As curators and historians, Bernhard, Guilherme, and Claire speak about where scholarship on Esperanto has been and is headed, how they decided to do this exhibition, how they executed it, and, eleven days into the exhibition being on display, how it has been received by the St Andrews community.
Other episodes have covered such varied topics as A History of Lise Meitner (the first in a series of episodes on women in physics), Decolonizing Spaces of Knowledge, Gaslight, Gatekeep, Guerilla: The Story of Algerian Women’s Fight for Independence, and, An Alternative History of House Music. Some episodes to come include Second-Wave Feminism: Critiquing the Wave Metaphor + East & West German Eco-Feminism, Slay thy Manor House Down! Medieval Queers & Other Marginalized Groups, and, Neurosis, Humours, and Witches Oh My! A History of Female Hysteria.
Hot Girl Histories currently has over 400 plays and 110 followers on Spotify. The most recent episode features Janey Jones, author of The Edinburgh Seven: a book detailing the experiences of Britain’s first female medical students who began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. A fascinating story about incredibly driven women, this history book highlights how men fear the ways in which confident, smart women can change patriarchal aspects of society.
Blog written by Dr Sarah Leith. Sarah is an Associate Lecturer in the School of History, her work focuses on on environmental thought and spirituality in twentieth century Scotland. You can follow Sarah on twitter (@quarry_wood), or email hiscomms@st-andrews.ac.uk if you have a contribution to our alumni magazine.
There were two things which sparked my love of history at a young age: Blue Peter and my grandparents’ St Andrews ghost stories. Unfortunately, I never received a coveted Blue Peter badge, but I still very much love history and books, and I shall happily tell willing ears all about Archbishop Sharp’s phantom coach. Growing up in St Andrews, I was lucky to be surrounded by the remains of Scotland’s past, from the Cathedral to the Castle to the Swilcan Bridge. St Andrews has a rich heritage, and Mary Queen of Scots seems to have slept in an ever-increasing number of bedrooms in its historic centre. This includes a room next to my new office, but sadly I have no paranormal occurrences to report, as yet. Wait, what was that…
Both town and gown have inspired my history career. In 2010, I was given a red gown, ready to set off on the first of many pier walks. Following my graduation, I worked in the School of Modern Languages Office, and then as a museum assistant at the British Golf Museum. I knew I wanted to continue to combine town, gown and history, and, inspired by Professor Roger Mason, I began an MLitt in Scottish Historical Studies. Fast-forward six years, and pulling on a blue gown this time, I graduated with my PhD. (By the way, the University of St Andrews holds excellent graduation garden parties.)
My research considers twentieth-century Scotland, with my focus being on environmental thought and spirituality during this period. I am especially interested in nature writing, and my current research is about Dundee writer and hillwalker Sydney Scroggie, the author of The Cairngorms Scene and Unseen. An article I have written about Syd Scroggie’s writing and intellectual thought is being published by Northern Scotland. Feeling inspired, I am hoping that I shall soon be able to say that I have been up more than just the Lomond Hills! Within the School of History, I am an Associate Lecturer (Education Focused), as well as the Communications Director and the editor of our alumni magazine, The St Andrews Historian. If you would like to be included in our ‘Alumni News’ section, please do send me an email to the following address by the end of May 2023: hiscomms@st-andrews.ac.uk. I also run the social media pages and website of the Institute of Scottish Historical Research (ISHR), so please follow us @ISHRStAndrews!
When I am not writing, talking or tweeting about history and literature, I enjoy sport and keeping fit. My proudest sporting achievement remains being appointed my school’s Captain of Tennis, and I still enjoy playing tennis and golf in the warmer months. In the winter, though, I am usually found at the gym or in a swimming pool. I am yet to brave the North Sea, but I am increasingly tempted by the Castle Sands pool, and paddle-boarding looks like a lot of fun. My great-grandfather used to swim from the pier to the West Sands, covered head to toe in grease for much-needed insulation, and he was also a + 1 golfer. I think it is safe to say that I shall attempt neither of these physical feats. According to Old Tom Morris, the ‘Grand Old Man of Golf’, all St Andrews bairns are born excellent swimmers and golfers; well, I hope I never bump into the ghost of a very disappointed Old Tom along Pilmour Links.
Blog written by Joanna Hambly. Joanna is a Research Fellow in the School of History, her work focuses on the archaeological heritage of Scotland’s coast. You can check out some of Joanna’s work on the SCAPE website here
In January 2009, I joined the small group of researchers chaired by Professor Chris Smout collectively known as the SCAPE Trust, in a project development role. The contract was supposed to last eight months. Fourteen years and many projects later, I am still here. You may not even know there are archaeologists (and even a geologist) who work out of the basement of the School of History.
SCAPE carries out research on the archaeological heritage of Scotland’s coast. As part of our work, we document how coastal processes impact archaeological sites. We are revealing evidence from past environments and learning how climate change will impact Scotland’s coastal archaeological resource in the future. Our methods involve the communities where we are working. Including volunteers in coastal surveys and projects allows locally held knowledge to improve heritage records. Information about changes to the coasts experienced by the people living there is also of great value to us.
We are currently in the second year of a five-year project carrying out community coastal surveys, filling in some of the gaps along coastlines that have not yet had a systematic archaeological survey. We use predictive models to forecast how coastal processes and the impacts of climate change will affect coastlines to target our surveys (well our geologist Sarah does this part!). Despite the benefits of technology, there is no replacement for boots on the ground. That’s why Sarah and I walked a good deal of the coast from Inverness to Johnshaven between April and October last year in the company of a great many different and wonderful people.
Although our research focuses primarily on Scotland, people worldwide are very interested in our approach and are eager to hear about our work. This takes us to many interesting places and brings international colleagues to Scotland to experience our stunning coastal heritage and learn from community projects going on around the country.
In life before St Andrews, I worked as an archaeologist in the commercial sector in the UK and France, held a four-year post on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Abhayagiriya in Sri Lanka, and for ten years, managed community heritage services for the Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire. I have degrees in Archaeology and Quaternary Science.
This varied experience prepared me well to make the most of my hugely enjoyable and rewarding role within the School of History. Although a lot of the work is pure project management, there is always the opportunity, and indeed the necessity, to investigate and learn about an incredibly diverse range of subjects. One of these is Scotland’s earliest coastal manufacturing industry, salt making. My interest in this started many years ago when I directed the excavations of the sixteenth-century salt pans at Brora. I’m honoured to be editing a new book on the history and archaeology of the Scottish salt industry with Chris Whatley – which will be in the bookshops in September!
Outside of work, you can find me in the garden, on a walk (usually at the coast), or helping out at the Wemyss Caves (which you should visit if you haven’t already done so).
Blog Written by Dr Bill Jenkins. Dr Jenkins is a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century British History, his research focuses on the history of science in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Scotland. You can check out Bill’s personal website here or follow him on twitter @BillHWJenkins
In 1986 I was a rather unenthusiastic 19-year-old zoology student at the University of Aberdeen. I always had a passionate interest in history but was advised by family and teachers to concentrate on science at school. I dropped the subject with much regret at an early stage of my secondary school career. But my love of history never waned and I spent much of my free time as a teenager with my nose in history books. During that year, I came across a reference in a zoology textbook to a work entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers. This was a great evolutionary epic published in 1844, 15 years before Darwin’s Origin of Species. This brief, passing reference made me wonder whether there was more to the history of evolution than the triumphalist accounts of Charles Darwin’s life and discoveries fed to undergraduate biology students and found in many popular science books.
A few years later, in my early twenties, I found myself working in a bookshop in Glasgow. While life in many ways was good, it was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my days. Casting around for what to do next, it occurred to me that Chambers and his remarkable book would make a wonderful subject for a PhD. I approached Professor John Henry at the University of Edinburgh with my ideas, and to my delight, he agreed to supervise my project. Sadly for me, the stars failed to align and my funding applications were unsuccessful. So, a sadder but wiser man, I took a job as a desk editor with Longman’s higher education division in Harlow and set my sights on a career in publishing. At the same time, I still wanted to direct my passion for history towards some goal, so I studied for a degree at the Open University in my spare time.
Various editorial jobs subsequently took me to London, back to Glasgow, to Madrid, and then back to Glasgow again. Years and then decades went by, and I was now in my early forties. It seemed that there would never be a better time to make one final attempt to achieve my ambition to study for a doctorate in the history of science. I got in touch once again with John Henry at Edinburgh, who had been so enthusiastic about my ideas all those years ago. Fortunately for me, he was still there and still interested in my project and agreed to supervise it. To my joy, this time one of my funding applications came good and the rest, as they say, is history.
Here I am, more than a decade later, teaching 19th-century British history at the University of St Andrews, with a monograph on Evolution before Darwin and a dozen or so journal articles to my name. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’. I think I can conclusively demonstrate that, with a bit of luck and perseverance, life can have as many acts as you want it to have.
Islay is a second-year Environmental History PhD candidate investigating how Californian perceptions of health and nature influenced the state’s experiences of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. She can be contacted by email (igs1@st-andrews.ac.uk) and can also be found on Twitter (@islayshelbourne).
Growing up in Hertfordshire, Islay’s gateway to what she hopes is a lifetime of historical study came, as all good things do, by way of a book. Having blitzed through all the pony books the school library had to offer, her parents handed her War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, igniting a burning passion for the past. From here, Islay enjoyed a typical historian’s childhood filled with National Trust properties, Horrible Histories books and many episodes of Time Team. Any career aspirations in archaeology though were quickly assuaged at age 9, on her first and only dig when she realised quite how much mud was involved in the process.
Knowing that her future lay in the past, Islay chose her undergraduate university before she chose her GCSEs and five years on started a BA in Modern and Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London. Here she enjoyed studying British, French, German and Russian history from the 1800s-present, as well as several Museum Studies courses and a swashbucklingly good module on the history of piracy. Islay was drawn to the study of scientific and technological advancement, but it was in her second and third-year medical history classes that she discovered her true passion for the history of science and medicine. Her undergraduate thesis, harking back to her early War Horse inspiration, investigated the work of the British Army Veterinary Corps during the First World War. She expanded on this subject in a talk on the Corps’ legitimizing efforts related to mange treatment for the Equine History Collective 2022 Conference.
Following her undergraduate degree it was another book, Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, which turned Islay’s attention to the history of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic and the development of virology as a discipline. She pursued this interest during her MRes Historical Research at the Institute of Historical Research, where she was also introduced to the field of environmental history. Equipped with a new methodological approach to studying the diseases of the past, Islay joined the rest of the world in gaining unfortunate first-hand experience of a pandemic while completing her MRes between 2019-2021. Her thesis applied Thomas S. Kuhn’s theory on the development of scientific revolutions to a study of British bacteriological debates on the aetiology of the 1918-19 influenza.
Islay started her PhD in Environmental History in September 2021. She intended to complete an environmental history of the 1918-19 pandemic, focussing on how pandemic experiences changed people’s perceptions of nature. A year and a half on, her thesis has changed in scope and scale but not subject. Her provisional title, ‘In California the Prognosis is Good’ Legacies of Health and Nature in California and their Impacts on Reactions to the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic’, now situates her research on Californian experiences of the pandemic. It will explore how the state’s citizens’ pre-existing understanding of health and nature influenced medical and lay responses to influenza in 1918.
Outside of her PhD, Islay is a tutor for MO1008: Themes in Modern History, a Writing Retreat organiser with CEED, and is the Events and Social Media Assistant for the ERC-funded ‘Everyday Dictatorship’ Project. Islay is also the Website Officer for the Northern Environmental History Network.
When not working, Islay continues to be an avid reader and also enjoys the challenge of learning Polish. Despite four years of classes, the grammar still gives her a headache! When she can find the time, she enjoys painting and digital art and is steadily befriending all of St Andrews’ cats.
Blog written by Dr Elise Watson. Dr Watson is a historian of early modern print, gender, and religious coexistence, and a current staff member of the Universal Short Title Catalogue Project. She is also the Managing Editor of Brill’s Book History Online. You can follow her on Twitter at @elisewatson
Like many historians and academics, I was an avid reader from birth. By the age of eight, I had polished off nearly every children’s book about anthropomorphic animals at the small public library in my hometown of Geneva, Illinois, and by high school I had finished the shelves on Shakespeare. It would have blown my tiny eight-year-old mind at the time to learn that one day, I would be done reading about warrior cats and Redwall Abbey and it would be my job to read, think, teach, and talk about books.
In 2017, I came to St Andrews as a Master’s student to study Reformation and book history, and knew immediately that this was the place for me. One PhD later, I am happily a postdoctoral researcher employed by the Universal Short Title Catalogue project, a website and search tool which allows users to search all books published in the first age of print. I get to teach courses on bibliography, work with materials in University Collections, and look at old books (albeit mostly on my computer screen) every single day. Looking at book data allows me to get to know seventeenth-century French melon sellers, learn about snowball fights, and investigate murders.
My interest in the Reformation led me to a PhD thesis on how print sustained marginalised religious communities in the seventeenth century. In particular, my project focused on the Catholic community in the Dutch Republic, today the Netherlands. This was a large minority that, although public practice of their religion was illegal, they nevertheless bribed the local police to let them worship anyway, built ostentatious house churches, and yes—printed and read their own books! I am particularly interested in the role women played in this book trade: in 2021 along with Nora Epstein and Jessica Farrell-Jobst, I organised a conference on gender and book history, and the resulting edited volume will (fingers crossed) come out this year, along with the book resulting from my thesis.
I don’t spend all of my time buried under a pile of books. Since moving here I’ve become obsessed with the Scottish landscape in all its glory: coastal walks, hills, munros, foraging during wild garlic season, and even the occasional freezing dip in the North Sea. I’m always down to bake or prepare an elaborate spread, especially a summer barbecue, and am in a perpetual search for the darkest roast coffee in Scotland. However, the books are never far: in my spare time, I’m currently working on a research side project on the history of Christian apocalypticism and its importance in current right-wing conspiracy theories like QAnon.
I also still do love to read for pleasure. If you came here for a recommendation, my current obsession is the novel Matrix by Lauren Groff, an imagined life of twelfth-century poet Marie de France where she becomes an abbess in rural England and transforms her convent into a visionary queer feminist utopia. The line Groff draws between the sacred and profane is one that I strive to emulate in my own research!
Ruadhán is a first-year PhD student working on the national identity and social status of Scottish army officers prior to and during the First World War. In his spare time, he is an enthusiastic historical reenactor. Connect with Ruadhán and follow him on Twitter (@1914_Subaltern).
A native of Fife, Ruadhán has spent his whole life immersed in Scottish history. A childhood spent visiting castles, museums and battlefields fostered a general interest in the past. From the age of ten, after being given a book of soldiers’ accounts by his grandfather, the First World War became something of an obsession. Growing up in the historic recruitment area of The Black Watch, Scotland’s most famous regiment, it is perhaps unsurprising that this unit became the focus of his research. Some of his earliest memories are of playing with an old sword in a dusty attic; two decades later it would transpire that it had been carried to war by one of the men who are now the subject of his PhD.
Attracted by the opportunity to study Scotland in the First World War, Ruadhán began his undergraduate degree in history at the University of Dundee in 2017. In the same week, he joined Scots at War Living History Society, a historical re-enactment group dedicated to portraying Scottish soldiers of the Great War. He discovered a passion for bringing the past to life. Unexpectedly, this hobby led to his first foray into academia. Whilst volunteering at the Black Watch Museum he contributed a short chapter to The Black Watch and the Great War (2020), edited by Fraser Brown and Derek Patrick, and realised that he quite liked writing about the regiment. Subsequently, his undergraduate dissertation examined the 1st Battalion, The Black Watch, during the retreat from Mons in 1914 and their portrayal in the media. This included a demographic study of the battalion, leading to the realisation that while over 90% of the soldiers were Scots, the officers who led them originated from places as diverse as Australia, Ceylon, Sweden and even Germany.
Now set on a career as a historian and determined to get to the bottom of how Scotland’s military leaders were chosen, Ruadhán undertook a Master of Research degree under the supervision of Professor Graeme Morton. He focused on 147 regular (full-time, professional) officers of The Black Watch between 1902-1914. His dissertation analysed how national identity and social status affected the selection of officers in the army, and how these concepts shaped individual and group dynamics (spoiler: you can be Scottish without being born there!)
Having returned to Fife in 2022, Ruadhán’s PhD project examines the officers of The Black Watch from 1902 to 1918 (2087 individuals). Under the Supervision of Dr Derek Patrick and Professor Sir Hew Strachan, his research aims to establish how officers were selected in a Scottish regiment prior to and during the First World War with specific reference to the impact of national identity and social status on the process. Additionally, it examines leadership and esprit de corps through relationships between officers and soldiers under their command, analysing how they were affected by different national and social origins. Rather than studying battles and armies, this type of military history concerns everyday life and social activities, from the barrack room to the ballroom.
In addition to his PhD research, Ruadhán is a Senior Libraries and Museums Assistant with the university’s archival collections. He is frequently found exploring the depths of the archive or diving down rabbit holes of university or local history. Unwilling to leave his project at the office, he spends much of his spare time in the uniform of an Edwardian army officer, at the head of a long-suffering band of living historians and frequently up to his kilt in mud!
Blog written by Samuel Huckleberry. Sam is currently in the second year of his research for a co-tutelle/joint PhD in Middle East Studies between the University of St Andrews and the University of Bonn, Germany. His research focuses on comparative approaches intersecting dependency, religion, rulership, and slavery in late medieval and ‘early modern’ Islamic empires. Connect with Sam via email (sh350@st-andrews.ac.uk) or follow him on Twitter (@SamHuckleberry).
My journey to the so-called ‘Middle East’ began by accident almost a decade after 9/11. Nearly a high school dropout from a working-class family, I enrolled for an Associates of Arts from San Antonio College, an affiliate of the Alamo Community Colleges District. It was there that I discovered that I liked learning – especially when it was on my terms. In my last year, I wrote a research paper comparing the British occupation of Iraq after World War I and the US one after 2003.
When I transferred to the University of Texas at Austin (UT) the following year, I thought I had a clear mission: I needed to understand why we would make similar mistakes. The Arab Spring had already swept across the region by the time I started learning Arabic. Thinking I would study the modern ‘Arab world’, I accidentally found a mentor in Dr Azfar Moin, who introduced me to the uses of anthropology in conceptualising premodern Islamic dynastic empires such as the Ottomans, the Mughals in what is now India and Pakistan, and the Safavids in Iran. Their fixation on marrying esotericism with kingship hooked me. Ultimately, I wrote a thesis which focused on institutional shifts and changing Ottoman elites serving at sea in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; especially elaborating tensions between the old guard, maritime ‘gazi’ or corsairs, and the new ones, palace-trained bureaucrat-servants.
After graduating, I spent time in Turkey teaching English and improving my language skills before I moved to Budapest, Hungary for an MA in Comparative History at Central European University (CEU). Embroiled in a fight with the country’s ‘illiberal’-minded leader, Victor Orbán, CEU had become a global symbol in the fight for academic freedom by the time I arrived. My studies were greatly informed by the heady experience of political oppression. The thesis, which was supervised by Dr Tijana Krstić, focused on revisionist readings of Safavid chronicles and sacred texts of the Safavids’ disciples, the Qizilbash (‘red-head’; so termed for a red hat or ‘crown’ they wore). In it, I argued against their presupposed marginalisation in Iran during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. So invested had I become in their story that I learned to play the bağlama or saz and sing the poetry (deyiş) of the Qizilbash’s descendants, the Alevis – now Turkey’s largest religious minority. This intense time was compounded by the pandemic, during which I wrote the thesis, graduated, and eventually returned to Texas.
That is, until I got an email from Professors Andrew Peacock (St Andrews) and Stephan Conermann (Bonn), my current supervisors, offering me a fully-funded opportunity to continue my studies. Being the inaugural Global PhD Scholar in History between St Andrews and Bonn affords me the chance to merge new thematic interests in dependency/slavery while deepening those I’ve learned about religion and rulership in my current work. Diachronic in nature, my thesis asks why the Ottomans and Safavids relied on military slavery while the Mughals did not. Looking at this question comparatively through an anthropological lens, the thesis brings together the cultural and political factors which led to the institution’s emergence – or its absence – in each realm.
My favourite memory so far from the PhD has been driving around Nevşehir (home to the natural spires and unnatural hot-air balloons of Cappadocia), Aksaray, and back to Ankara over the past summer. I drove around visiting historical and sacred sites scattered across the gorgeous scenery of central Turkey/Türkiye (İçAnadolu) in my trusty blue-colored rental car. I named it “Thunderbolt” (Yıldırım) in honor of my comparatively modest speed next to the hearty trucks whose rear-ends were plastered with bold-font slogans like ALLAH KORUSUN! (May God Protect!).
2022 was another excellent year for the School of History. Staff and students fully returned to the classroom in person as the final Covid restrictions were relaxed. This round-up will briefly touch on a few achievements of the previous year. They are a testament to the ongoing dedication of those working and studying in the department throughout these difficult times.
Once again, the School was honoured to take the top spot in subject-specific national university league tables. The School was ranked first in two of the UK’s three league tables, the Guardian University Guide 2023 and The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023. The former also awarded the entire University first place overall. These successes built upon the School’s success in the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF found 90% of the research conducted either ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.
In January, Professor Elena Marushiakova and Professor Veselin Popov were presented with the ROMANIPE award for their contribution to the research of the Roma community in Bulgaria and the world. February was LGBT+ History Month. The School marked this by hosting a workshop on ‘Transgender Cultures in Modern History’. This workshop brought together scholars of transgender histories from across the world to identify shared themes, situate local and/or temporal specificities and explore related historiographical, theoretical and methodological questions.
March saw Professor Aileen Fyfe elected as one of eighty researchers, thinkers and practitioners to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In addition, she received a major research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for 2022-2024. In April, Dr Milinda Banerjee was awarded one of the University’s six Teaching Excellence Awards for 2021-22 for his coordination of the MLitt in Global Political Thought. The award recognised his ‘vision for interdisciplinarity’, and his dedication to supporting students throughout their studies.
October was Black History Month, which members of the School of history marked by contributing to an online exhibition, ‘Encounters with Black History’. Colleagues used the opportunity to showcase some of the objects, photographs and texts they use for teaching and research. The exhibition features thought-provoking sources, including ‘modern historical writing… photos and stamps, nineteenth-century letters and drawings… early printed books, medieval paintings, late antique manuscripts and inscriptions’.
In November, Dr Tim Greenwood was elected as a ‘Correspondant étranger’ of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (part of the Institut de France). Correspondantsétrangers are elected for life for their contribution to the fields of archaeology, history, philology, and their multiple divisions and specialist areas. There are only ever fifty at any one time. Dr Greenwood’s work focuses on the history of Armenia between 400 and 1100 CE.
To round out the year, the School of History received news that three colleagues were named in King Charles’s first New Year Honours list. The awards recognise their service to the nation in the fields of history, culture, politics and higher education. Professor Colin Kidd received an OBE for services to history, culture and politics. Emeritus Professor of Modern History Rab Houston received an MBE for services to higher education and Honorary Senior Lecturer of Medieval History Lorna Walker also received an MBE for services to higher education.
Congratulations to Tim Greenwood! Dr Greenwood has been elected as a ‘Correspondant étranger’ of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (part of the Institut de France). There are only ever 50 correspondants étrangers in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres at any one time.
In October Thomasz Kamusella gave an interview to Channel 24 News Ukraine on language politics and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. You can watch it in English here.
On 6 October, Malcolm Petrie gave a talk on ‘Scottish Politics since 1945’ for the Edinburgh North and Leith Constituency Labour Party.
On 6 October, James Palmer gave the public lecture ‘Wilfrid, Willibrord and the Expansion of Christian Europe’ as part of the 1350th anniversary of the building of the Ripon Cathedral’s crypt.
On 22 October, Derek Patrick gave the talk ‘The battle which is to begin will be one of the decisive battles of history: El Alamein and the 5th Black Watch’ at the The Black Watch Association (Angus Branch) El Alamein Dinner.
Cox, Rory, Faye Donnelly, and Anthony F. Lang, Jr. ‘Contesting Torture: Continuing Debates, Questions, and Reflections’, in Rory Cox, Faye Donnelly, Anthony F. Lang, Jr. (eds), Contesting Torture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2022), pp. 1-15.
Müller, Frank, ‘Liberalismus und Monarchie im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Eckart Conce, Dominik Geppert, Ewald Grothe, Wolther von Kieseritzky, Anne Christina Nagel, Joachim Scholtyseck, Elke Seefried (eds), Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung (Nomos, 2022), pp. 129-144.
Stewart, Angus, ‘”One of the Most Glorious Fortresses”: Rum Kale in the Sultanate of Cairo’, in Scott Redford (ed), Ortaçağ’dan Günümüze Rumkale (Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, Gaziantep, 2022).
Ylitalo, Matthew and Sarah Easterby-Smith, ‘Ships, space and sources: heterotopia on the high seas’, in Riccardo Bavaj, Konrad Lawson, and Bernhard Struck (eds), Doing Spatial History (Routledge, 2022), pp. 121-138.
For Black History Month this October, colleagues in the School of History created an exhibition describing some of the images, texts and objects they teach and research. These range from modern historical writing to photos and stamps, nineteenth-century letters and drawings to early printed books, medieval paintings, late antique manuscripts and inscriptions. You can view the exhibition here.
St Andrews School of History 