Research Overview
My research focuses primarily on Scotland, with a particular focus on the revolution of 1688–90 and its short- and long-term consequences.
Key research themes and specialisms:
- Anti-Catholicism and its role in Protestant identity formation
- Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism
- The relationship between Scotland's Church and government before and after 1707
- Religious persecution and exile
- Early modern Catholic and Protestant missions
My PhD research, which I am currently developing as a monograph, explored anti-Catholicism in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century, paying particular attention to the term 'popery' and how it was used and contested by rival Protestant factions. My work as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Stirling focused particularly on the religious policies of Scotland's privy council, including its relationship with the established Church, its interactions with different religious minorities and dissidents, and its attitudes towards Protestants suffering religious persecution abroad. My latest research will focus on Jacobite intellectual, cultural and social networks, placing Scotland and Scottish Jacobites within a broader European and Atlantic context.
