Scottish History Society 2025 Conference, Presidential Lecture & AGM

‘The Sources of Scottish History’

University of Edinburgh

29 March 2025

All events will take place in the University of Edinburgh’s Old Medical School (Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9AG)

9.00-9.10am Welcome and Introductory Remarks (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

9.15-10.45am Panels 1A and 1B

Panel 1A (Meadows Lecture Theatre)
Scots and Empire

Chair: Annie Tindley

- Shankara Angadi, ‘Manuscripts as materiality: retrieving and contextualising items from the Munro Papers relating to Scotland 1800-1815’

- Rosi Carr, ‘Connecting Colonial Spaces: The Correspondence of Murdoch McLaine of Lochbuie’

- Kristen Thomas-McGill, ‘Sources of Doubt: Archives and Sexual Abuse in Scottish Imperial Histories’

Panel 1B (Room G.16)
Scholarship in Pre-Modern Scotland: Humanism and Learned Culture

Chair: Clare Loughlin

- Francesca Pontini, ‘Using books at University during the Sixteenth century, two case studies’

- Jonathan Gibson, ‘Sir James Balfour’s ‘Treatise on Surnames’: Inheritance and Identity in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Scotland’

- Kelsey Jackson Williams, ‘Rescuing the Renaissance: Father Robert Francis Strachan (c.1660-1725) and Scotland’s Earliest Printed Books’

10.45-11.15am Tea & Coffee Break

11.15-12.45pm Panels 2A and 2B

Panel 2A (Meadows Lecture Theatre)
Complex Manuscripts: Medieval Scottish History and Culture

Chair: Jade Scott

- Bryony Coombs, 'The Politics of Persuasion: The Complex Manoeuvres of a Bishop, a Queen and a Rediscovered Manuscript'

- Dauvit Broun, ‘Digitising and editing complex manuscripts: the example of annalistic chronicles (with particular reference to the Chronicle of Melrose)’

- Kirsty Pattison, ‘Henryson’s Orpheus – The greatest Scottish literary debate?’

Panel 2B (Room G.16)
The Law and Beyond: Legal Sources for Scottish History

Chair: Alasdair Raffe

- Stephanie Dropjulic, ‘The Sources of Scottish “Legal” History – Reflections on Robert Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials in Scotland and its relationship to the archival sources’

- John Finlay, ‘Lawyers’ letter books as an historical source for the early 19th century’

- Calum Ross, ‘A surcease of justice? The ’45 seen through Session and Justiciary Papers’

12.45-2.30pm AGM and Lunch (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

Conference attendees are welcome to join the AGM (Meadows Lecture Theatre) before exploring the many lunch options in Edinburgh.

2.30-4.00pm Panels 3A and 3B

Panel 3A (Meadows Lecture Theatre)
New Approaches to Archival Sources

Chair: Jim MacPherson

- Jack Abernethy, ‘War, Trade, and Diplomacy: Sources of James VI in Het Nationaal Archief in The Hague, c.1584-1603’

- Ashley Brown, ‘Understanding the Balcarres Papers: insights into academic gender practices’

- Jenny Duffy, ‘Dear Miss Stagg: An exploration of letters from girls in care and domestic service 1915-1924’

Panel 3B (Room G.16)
Looking Beyond the ‘Local’: Manuscripts and Material Culture

Chair: Laura Doak

- Olivia Dunderdale, ‘The Accounts of the Burgh of Elgin, c.1570-1620’

- Margaret Connolly and Rachel Hart, ‘The Book and the Cup: Making your Mark in 16^th-century Edinburgh’

- Alanna MacTavish, ‘Recreating the Jacobite World of Scottish University Students in the 18th Century: The intrinsic value of university manuscripts’

4.00-4.30pm Tea & Coffee Break

4.30-5.30pm Presidential Lecture (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

James Robertson, ‘Scottish History, Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory’

What is our imaginative relationship with the past, both collectively and as individuals, and what are the effects of historical knowledge, historical fiction and the passage of time on that relationship? This lecture explores these and other questions with reference to the novels of Sir Walter Scott and John Galt on the Covenanters, and to the speaker's own novels about the Covenanters, Scotland and slavery, and Scotland in the second half of the 20th century.