Research groups in History

 Economic and social historians now form a vibrant research group in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. Whilst our interests cover a range of themes, chronological periods, and geographical places, we share the following:

• A commitment to interdisciplinarity, working in dialogue with other social sciences (including economics, political science, sociology, anthropology and criminology)
•  A strong interest in producing research that is relevant and useful to wider audiences, including policy-makers and practitioners, and which contributes to wider public debate
• Enthusiasm for innovations in the use of sources, methods  and approaches (both quantitative and qualitative, and including digital humanities)

The diverse topics and themes that we cover include: economic planning; natural resources and energy policy; time and economics; trade and tariffs; the transatlantic slave trade; war and conflict; inequality and living standards; craft economies; textiles and design; urban environments; maps and mapping; social networks; gender and sexuality; social history of the body, medicine and psychiatry; crime and policing; piracy and smuggling; oral culture and print culture; and sport, leisure and cinema-going. 

Our work has attracted significant recent funding from the AHRC, ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Wellcome Trust.

Funded research projects

Funded projects in which we are currently involved include:

• Artisans and the Craft Economy in Scotland c. 1780-1914 (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) (Principal Investigator Prof Stana Nenadic): https://artisansinscotland.wordpress.com/
• Caring for the Future through Ancestral Time (funded by the AHRC and ESRC), with researchers in the Schools of Divinity, Geosciences, Philosophy and Politics (Co-Investigator Prof Martin Chick)
• Early Cinema in Scotland (funded by the AHRC), with researchers at the University of Glasgow (Co-Investigator Dr Trevor Griffiths): http://earlycinema.gla.ac.uk/
• Historicising ‘Historical Child Sexual Abuse’ (funded by the ESRC), with researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Sheffield (Principal Investigator Prof Louise Jackson): http://www.historyandpolicy.org/projects/project/historical-child-sex-abuse
• Mapping Edinburgh’s Social History (funded by the AHRC) (Principal Investigator Prof Richard Rodger), in partnerships with National Library of Scotland, City of Edinburgh Council, RCAHMS, and Edinburgh World Heritage: http://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/research/research-projects/mapping-edinburgh-s-social-history
• Mary’s Chapel Project (funded through the University’s Development and Alumni Office) (Dr Aaron Allen)

• The Abortion Act (1967): A Biography (funded by the AHRC)  (Co-investigator Dr Gayle Davis): https://research.kent.ac.uk/aa/

Teaching and Research degrees

We offer undergraduate degrees (MA) in Economic History, and Economic and Social History.  At postgraduate level we offer the MSc by Research in Economic and Social History, and we welcome new PhD students across our wide range of research interests.

Other activities and links

We run seminar series in Economic and Social History and Histories of Gender and Sexuality and act as a hub for Second World War Studies.

We are actively involved in the Economic History Society. Nuala Zahedieh is a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the EHS Conference Committee, and she is on the editorial board of the Economic History Review.  Georgina Rannard is Student Ambassador for the EHS.

Gayle Davis is a member of the editorial boards of History of Psychiatry and  Scottish Archives

Stana Nenadic is Director of the Pasold Research Fund, which promotes research into fashion, textile and clothing history, and publishes the journal Textile History.

The journal Social History is based at Edinburgh (under editors Louise Jackson and Gordon Johnston) and they are also involved in the  SocialHistoryBlog (http://socialhistoryblog.com/)

Richard Rodger is on the Editorial Board of Urban History and Treasurer of the Urban History Group.

Adam Fox is a Committee Member of the 'British Academy Records of Social and Economic History' series published by Oxford University Press.

Wendy Ugolini is on the editorial board of Contemporary British History.

(HGS) brings together staff and postgraduate students whose research embraces gender, sexuality and/or women’s history. Important shared interests currently include structure and agency in theory and practice; gender and systems of regulation; fertility and reproduction.

Through a range of formal and informal events (HGS) encourages critical exploration of crucial theoretical and methodological questions, and promotes the history of gender and sexuality across disciplines and periods from prehistory to the contemporary world.  Alongside a seminar series we also organise work-in-progress sessions, roundtables, workshops and symposia. (HGS) is designed to provide a forum in which both staff and student research can flourish, and current PhD students act as group co-ordinators alongside academic staff. 

(HGS) runs regular seminars throughout the academic year to which all are welcome. See seminar information here.

Current projects

• 'The Abortion Act (1967): A Biography' (Professor Gayle Davis)
• 'Gender equalities at work: an interdisciplinary history of 50 years of legislation' (Professor Louise Jackson)
• ‘Alice Thornton’s Books: Remembrances of a Woman’s Life in the Seventeenth Century’ (Professor Cordelia Beattie)

Co-ordinators

• Dr Kate Davison
• Dr Wannes DuPont
• Barbara Gabeler
• Dr Sarah Goldsmith
• Dr Zubin Mistry
• Dr Rochelle Rowe
• Dr Hatice Yildiz

Academic staff members

Archaeology

• Dr Chiara Bonacchi

• Classics

• Dr Lilah Grace Canevaro
• Dr Ulrike Roth

• History

• Dr Bill Aird
• Dr Angela Bartie
• Professor Crispin Bates
• Professor Cordelia Beattie
• Dr Adam Budd
• Dr Ashlee Christoffersen
• Professor Gayle Davis
• Dr Kate Davison
• Dr Wannes DuPont
• Professor Emeritus Julian Goodare
• Professor Louise Jackson
• Professor Stana Nenadic
• Professor Diana Paton
• Dr Rochelle Rowe
• Dr Tom Webster

Honorary staff and emeriti

• Dr Esther Breitenbach

Current PhD students 

• Kathryn Comper, ‘Church Discipline and the Godly Community in Scotland, 1660-1712’
• Thomas Crepin, ‘The Intersex Movement and Christian Denominations in the United States since 1990’
• Abigail Fletcher, ‘From Partition to Decriminalisation: Homosexuality in Northern Ireland 1921-1982’Jax Hughes, ‘The Changing Lives of Roman Freedwomen: Ancient and Modern at the Crossroads in the Long Twentieth Century’
• Barbara Gabeler, ‘A Conspiracy of Silence: Abortion, Birth Control and Eugenics in Early Twentieth-century Scotland’
• Moss Pepe, ‘Gender Non-conformity in Medieval French Romance’
• Mara Schmueckle, 'Dispensing Marriage in Pre-Reformation Scotland'
• Cecilia White, 'Assessing Changes in Elite Women's Garments in Fourteenth-century England'

HSMT-Ed is an interdisciplinary research group based in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. We bring together academics, doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers from across the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science who share an interest in the history of medicine, science and technology from antiquity to the present.

Research areas

We encourage exchange between academics across the humanities/science. Our work has been funded by the AHRC, Carnegie Trust, Leverhulme Trust, and Wellcome Trust. A number of projects by members of the group reflect this attention to cross-disciplinary collaboration:

• Mathematical Humanities: Antiquarian Roots of the Enlightenment University – funded by the Carnegie Trust (Dr Richard Oosterhoff)
• Modelling the Construction of the Water Supply of Constantinople – funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Prof. Jim Crow)
• The Abortion Act (1967): A Biography – funded by the AHRC (Dr Gayle Davis)

Seminars

This research group organises a seminar series  about the history of science, medicine and technology.  You can find the programme for this year on the HSMT group seminar page.

HSMT-Ed combines Edinburgh’s remarkable history and unique resources with world-leading research in the fields of medicine, science and technology. Geographically, we span the globe from East to West, with a focus on Europe. Thematically, our members’ expertise includes: the history of sexuality and the body from the Middle Ages to modern times, the history of modern psychiatry both in the East and in the West, the history of epidemics and natural disasters and related emotional responses, the history of distributed cognition, the history and philosophy of biology, medieval to modern pharmacology and medicine, the history of public health and administration, veterans’ health during WWII, popular and learned healing practices from Anglo-Saxon times to the Renaissance, the history of astrology and astronomy, the Scientific Revolution, Newtonianism and the Enlightenment, Renaissance to modern mathematical culture, British 18^th-  and 19^th-century medical professions, collecting and life writing, and late Antique and early Byzantine engineering. Our wide range of specialisms is unique in Scotland and provides the basis for lively and mutually beneficial exchange within and beyond the academy.

Membership

We're always looking for more members and participants! To be added to the HSMT-Ed email listserv for updates on events, please subscribe here or contact one of the group Co-ordinators.

Co-ordinators

• Zubin Mistry (School of History, Classics and Archaeology)
• Richard Oosterhoff (School of History, Classics and Archaeology)
• Petros Bouras-Vaillanatos (School of History, Classics and Archaeology - Wellcome Lecturer in History of Medicine)

Staff members (School of History, Classics and Archaeology)

• Dr Bill Aird
• Dr Miranda Anderson
• Dr Thomas Ahnert
• Dr Petros Bouras-Vaillanatos
• Dr Emily Brownell
• Professor Douglas Cairns
• Professor Jim Crow
• Dr Gayle Davis
• Dr Linda Fibiger
• Dr Julie Gibbings
• Dr Julian Goodare
• Dr Chris Harding
• Dr Kathleen McSweeney
• Professor Stana Nenadic
• Professor Richard Rodger
• Dr Richard Sowerby
• Dr Justyna Aniceta Turkowska

Staff members (School of Social and Political Science)

• Dr Michael Barany
• Dr Lawrence Dritsas
• Dr Lukas Engelmann
• Dr Miguel Garcia-Sancho 
• Professor Steven Sturdy
• Dr Niki Vermeulen

Staff members (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Science)

• Dr Alix Cohen
• Professor Michela Massimi 

Honorary and emeritus

• Professor Sam Cohn
• Professor John Henry

Edinburgh has one of the largest concentrations of intellectual historians of any university in the UK, with particular strengths in the following areas:

• Ancient Greek political thought and practice
• Early modern European intellectual history
• Modern global intellectual history (including Europe, America, Asia and Africa)

Our members are currently involved in a wide range of research projects, including: 

• a history of distributed cognition, the ability of humans to rely on features of the body and the world to supplement and structure our thinking in subtle and complex ways, from ancient Greece and through the ages (Prof Douglas Cairns)
• Greeks' ideas about the role of the law and the relationship between authoritative lawgiving and popular sovereignty (Dr Mirko Canevaro)
• the role of intellectuals in Hellenistic society and the impact of the emergence of the royal court as a focus for intellectual activity on the character of Greek intellectual culture (Prof Andrew Erskine)
• a history of Japan's first psychotherapists (1930s - 1960s), together with the broader national and transnational processes of 'religion-psy dialogue' of which they were a pioneering part (Dr Christopher Harding)
• a political and intellectual biography of William Carstares, one of King William III’s most important advisors on Scottish ecclesiastical and political affairs (Dr Esther Mijers)
• Scottish religious heterodoxy and its contribution to European free thought, c. 1688-1713, with particular attention to the writings of Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713) (Dr Alasdair Raffe)

We organise work-in-progress seminars for PhD students and members of staff, as well as occasional lectures from scholars within and outwith Edinburgh. The Group is also on Twitter. You can find out more about the seminars and follow the Group at the links below.

Seminar series Twitter

Membership

Irish History Research Group

The Group has unique strengths in the history of Ireland under the Union (1801-1921), Irish-British relations, the history of nationalism and unionism, comparative and transnational history, Scottish-Irish history, and the history of the global Irish diaspora since 1700.

Current major research projects include a comparative study of political unions in European history and the Irish encounter with modernity since 1780, supported by a number of prestigious research awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Commission Programme. Since 2007 we have won over £1 million in highly competitive external funding awards.

We have close working relationships with a number of Irish universities and the Irish Research Council. Two members of the group are Honorary Members of the Royal Irish Academy (only 30 or so scholars in the humanities and social sciences worldwide hold this distinction) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and one is a Fellow of the British Academy. One of the group was appointed by the Irish Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to the Irish Manuscripts Commission, the first such appointment from outside the island of Ireland. We have established links with the modern Irish history group at Cambridge University, including holding regular joint PhD workshops in both Edinburgh and Cambridge. We also work closely with colleagues at the major North American centres of Irish Studies at Boston College, the University of Notre Dame and New York University.

Our aim is to explore the history of modern Ireland in a comparative, transnational and global context, with a particular focus on political, social and cultural relationships with Scotland, England and Wales, as well the principal countries in which the Irish have settled in over the last three centuries.

Graduate students work on a wide range of topics and hold funding awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Economic and Social Research Council as well as University and School studentships. We also host the only PhD scholarship in the UK devoted exclusively to the study of Irish history, the Justin Arbuthnott PhD Scholarship in Modern Irish History.

Activities

The activities of the group include hosting a seminar series, which features many of the most original scholars working in the field from Ireland, Britain and further afield, a fortnightly early career researchers’  workshop, and the annual Justin Arbuthnott Lecture in British-Irish Relations, delivered in recent years by distinguished figures including Tom Bartlett,  Mary E. Daly, Diarmaid Ferriter, Fintan O’Toole and Roy Foster.

We regularly host symposia and workshops on aspects of Irish history including recent events on 'Writing the Troubles', ‘The Irish Border’, ‘The 1918 General Election’, ‘Abortion in Ireland: A Transformative Moment?’, 'History, Storytelling and 1916’ and ‘Transnational Irish History'. In July 2022 we will host the ‘Ireland and Sexualities in History’ workshop.

Follow the Irish History Research Group

Modern Irish History seminars

 Irish History Research Group on Twitter

Our links with political scientists in the School of Social and Political Science provide interdisciplinary perspectives.

Is it useful to think of 'political history' as a distinctive intellectual endeavour? Or is all history 'political history'? This group brings together researchers in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology with diverse geographical and chronological focuses, but with common interests in a range of areas relating to past politics. It provides a meeting point for scholars at different career stages who are interested in concepts such as power, legitimacy, authority; in the cultural dimensions of political life and practices such as rhetoric and political violence; and in political actors ranging from Kings, Queens and international leaders to the disenfranchised and marginalised.

The principal aim of the group is to provide a space for scholars at all career stages and with diverse geographical and chronological focuses, but with shared interests in researching past politics. One key early objective is to open up discussions around political and international history themes with colleagues in cognate disciplines, especially within the School of Social and Political Science.

The Political and International History Research Group has a blog, research.shca.ed.ac.uk/political

Research areas

Research in the following broad areas is being undertaken by members of the group:

• Modern British, Scottish and Irish politics. Work includes: the editing of the Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000, research on the late-seventeenth-century revolution in Scotland, an exploration of the political cultures of unionism and nationalism in post-1945 Scotland, and research into political mobilization across the Irish diaspora.

• International and diplomatic history. Work includes global, and transnational work, alongside International Relations colleagues in the School of Political Science.

• American political history. Work includes: an examination of the political rivalry between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, research on the nature of the domestic debate on the Vietnam War, and a study using the life and career of Spiro Agnew as a lens onto American politics in the 1960s and 70s.
• African History. This includes collaborative work with political scientists on citizenship in Africa.
• European history. Work encompasses: postwar French politics and political culture, politics and violence in twentieth-century Spain, and emperors and high-office holders in the late Roman Empire.

Seminars and events

The focus of this group is to encourage doctoral students and early career colleagues to present their in-progress work during lunchtime brownbag seminars, in order to receive feedback and encouragement from their peers.  If you would like to present your work at one of our seminars, please contact Dr Kaufman. The Group also runs occasional seminars, lectures and events to which all are welcome - Political History Research Groups seminar.

Membership

Please direct any queries to the Group co-ordinator Dr David Kaufman.

Co-ordinators

• Dr David Kaufman and Dr Benjamin Weinstein

Academic staff members

• Dr Bill Aird
• Dr Felix Boecking
• Dr Deona Cali
• Professor Ewen Cameron
• Professor Mirko Canevaro
• Dr Emile Chabal
• Dr Robert Crowcroft
• Prof Frank Cogliano
• Professor Julian Goodare
• Dr Fabian Hilfrich
• Professor Emma Hunter
• Professor Alvin Jackson
• Professor Gavin Kelly

• Dr Iain Lauchlan

• Professor Robert Mason
• Dr Gordon Pentland
• Dr Gianluca Raccagni
• Dr Alasdair Raffe
• Dr Julius Ruiz