Following the further award of £1.33m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Phase 2 of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen began its work in January 2006
Following the further award of £1.33m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Phase 2 of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen begins its work in January 2006.
The new Director, Professor Cairns Craig, formerly of the University of Edinburgh, said that the award for Phase 2 was not only recognition of the very significant work done in Phase 1 by scholars at Aberdeen, and at its partner institutions of Trinity College, Dublin and Queen’s, Belfast, but of the enormous potential that that work had revealed in the comparative study of the two cultures. Phase 2 would focus on developing such comparative research into the history and literature of both countries and into the experience of their migrant communities throughout the world.
In this Phase 2 will not only add significantly to our knowledge of Ireland and Scotland , Professor Craig suggested, but would develop and test models for future comparative study of other cultures.
Five key projects will feed into the development of the first sustained effort to define the relationships between Ireland and Scotland in terms of their shared experience of modernity, empire and migration. These include:
- Irish and Scottish diasporas from the 1600s to the present, led by Dr Enda Delaney ( Aberdeen )
- the role of Jacobitism in the development of Scotland ’s commercial and imperial links from 1680-1830, led by Professor Allan MacInnes ( Aberdeen ) in conjunction with researchers at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich
- the impact on the United States and the countries of the British Empire of intellectual migration from Scotland and Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, led by Professor Cairns Craig (Aberdeen)
- a comparative study of twentieth-century Irish and Scottish poetry, led by Professor Edna Longley and Dr Fran Brearton (Queen’s, Belfast)
- the development of representations of dialect in the novel in Ireland and Scotland in the nineteenth century, led by Professor David Hewitt and Dr Barbara Fennell (Aberdeen)
To these projects will be linked four postdoctoral fellows and four PhD students, to be appointed by September, as well as a programme of visiting fellowships which will bring scholars from across the world to work in Aberdeen over the next five years. In addition, the Centre will be launching a new journal of Irish and Scottish studies to encourage scholars who work in Irish or Scottish studies to engage with both.
Professor Craig praised the work of his predecessor, Professor Tom Devine, who has moved to the University of Edinburgh to take up the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History, both for the success of Phase 1 and for gaining the award for Phase 2. As himself Chair of the Academic Advisory Board in Phase 1, Professor Craig had had a long involvement with the Centre. ‘My aim’, he said, ‘is to ensure that Phase 2 is every bit as successful as Phase 1, and that Irish-Scottish studies is recognised as setting a leading-edge agenda for research not only in history and literature, but in the theoretical perspectives which inform the work of those disciplines.’