Irish and Scottish Studies

As a student of Irish and/or Scottish studies at the University of Aberdeen you will have the opportunity to focus on topics ranging from medieval Scotland to the Scottish and Irish Enlightenment to Scottish politics from 1300-1600, and more. Students are supervised by experts in their respective fields, with one-on-one supervisory meetings and access to the University library resources.

We are interested in hearing from students wishing to undertake postgraduate level work in Irish and Scottish Studies at the doctoral level. Please contact one of the supervisors below if you are thinking about applying for a PhD in their subject area.

Professor Jackson Armstrong: Supervision is offered in Scottish politics and landed society c.1300–c.1600; English politics and landed society c.1350–c.1500; aspects of medieval and early modern nobility, rulership, and law; aspects of medieval and early modern borderlands and peripheries.

Dr Bradford Bow: Supervision is offered in the intellectual history of eighteenth - and early nineteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment moral and natural philosophy; Scottish philosophical and literary societies; Scottish intellectual and moral culture in the age of revolution; intellectual currents of Scottish global Diaspora; the ‘First’ British Empire.

Professor Michael Brown: Supervision is offered in eighteenth-century British and Irish political identity and the development of nationalism; the Enlightenment in the British Isles; Britain and Ireland in the 1790s.

Dr Alastair Macdonald: Supervision is offered in later Medieval Scotland; medieval warfare; Anglo-Scottish relations; the Anglo-Scottish borders; and medieval Aberdeen.

Some current (and graduated) students and their projects from the University of Aberdeen include:

• Rose Luminiello, A Comparative Study of Sectarianism and Religion: Ulster and Poznania, 1890-1921
• Douglas Smith, Scottish Political Exiles in England, 1400-1500
• Lawrence Butler Perks, Understanding the content, form and purposes of Hero Myths as symbolic resources of nation and insurgency: the case of the Provisional IRA in the Northern Ireland conflict, 1969-1998

The following are some selected publications relating to Irish and Scottish Studies by staff at the University of Aberdeen:

Dr Alastair Macdonald

• 'Courage, fear and the experience of the later medieval Scottish soldier'. Scottish Historical Review, vol 92, no. 2, pp. 179-206.
• MacDonald, AJ. (2000). 'The Apogee of the 'Auld Alliance' and the Limits of Policy'. Northern Scotland, vol 20, pp. 31-46.
• 'Triumph and disaster: Scottish military leadership in the Later Middle Ages', in A King & D Simpkin (eds), England and Scotland at War, c.1296-c.1513. History of Warfare, vol. 78, Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, pp. 255-282.
• 'John Hardyng, Northumbrian Identity and the Scots', in CD Liddy & RH Britnell (eds), North-East England in the Later Middle Ages. Regions and Regionalism in History, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk, United Kingdom, pp. 29-42.
• Border Bloodshed: Scotland and England at War 1369-1403. Tuckwell Press, East Linton, United Kingdom.

Professor Michael Brown

• 'Swift, Satire and the Problem of Whig Regeneration'. Restoration Studies in English Literary Culture 1660-1700, vol 39, no. 1-2, pp. 83-99.
• 'The Biter Bitten: Ireland and the Rude Enlightenment'. Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol 45, no. 3, pp. 393-407
• Brown, MP. & Donlan, SP. (eds) (2011). The Law and Other Legalities of Ireland, 1689-1850. Ashgate, Farnham.
• Francis Hutcheson in Dublin, 1719-1730: The Crucible of his Thought. Four Courts Press, Dublin
• The Irish Enlightenment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA

Dr Jackson Armstrong

• Oliver, J., Armstrong, J., Milek, K., Schofield, JE., Vergunst, J., Brochard, T., Gould, A. & Noble, G. (2016). 'The Bennachie Colony: A Nineteenth-Century Informal Community in Northeast Scotland'. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, vol 20, no. 2, pp. 341-377
• 'The justice ayre in the border sheriffdoms, 1493-1498'. Scottish Historical Review, vol 92, no. 1, pp. 1-37
• 'Local Society and the Defence of the English Frontier in Fifteenth-Century Scotland: The War Measures of 1482'. Florilegium, vol 25, pp. 127-149
• Moncreiffe of That Ilk, Sir, I. & Armstrong, J. (ed.) (2010). The law of succession: origins and background of the law of succession to arms and dignities in Scotland. John Donald, Edinburgh, UK.
• Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong, 1859 and 1869. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Dr Colin Barr

•  Ireland's Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking world, 1830-1914, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming)
• Paul Cullen, 1803-1878: Church, State, and Ireland's Devotional Revolution, University College Dublin Press (forthcoming)

Some helpful links for further information and resources in Irish and Scottish Studies include:

• Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
• Aberdeen Burgh Records Database
• Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies
• Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies
• Royal Historical Society