Celtic & Scottish Studies

AHRC/DFG Walter Scott Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border Project

The project runs from April 2011 to March 2014 and its overall aim is to produce a new critical edition of Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in the framework of a literary, musical, historical, cultural and contextual analysis. An educational website on the Minstrelsy and its ballads will also be available at the end of year two of the project. A PhD studentship funded by the AHRC is attached to the project, and the thesis will explore the topic of collective memory in the Scottish Borders around 1800, focusing in particular on the cultural context of Scott’s Minstrelsy texts.

Welcome to the website of the UK Minstrelsy team. This is a joint project run between the University of Edinburgh and the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. The UK side is funded by the AHRC. The Principal Investigator and editor of the Critical Edition is Professor Sigrid Rieuwerts.

The UK project team are based at Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh.

Click here to access the project website in Germany:

Project Manager (UK side) Associate Editor of the Critical Edition

Katherine Campbell is Director of Research at Celtic and Scottish Studies. She is responsible for the management of the UK side of the project and for decisions regarding the musical components of the Minstrelsy.

Contact Katherine

Senior Research Fellow (years 1-3) Associate Editor of the Critical Edition

Emily Lyle is internationally known as a ballad scholar and has published extensively on Scottish ballads. Her role on the project is editing texts and researching their background, especially relating to the supernatural, and developing theoretical approaches in association with colleagues.

Contact Emily

Research Fellow (years 1-2)

Kaye McAlpine specialises in Scottish historical ballads and her role includes writing critical notes on these as well as writing content for the Minstrelsy website, part of which will be aimed at schools and at the general public.

PhD Student

Lucy MacRae graduated from the University of Glasgow in 2008 with a degree in English Literature and Gaelic. She obtained an MSc by Research in Scottish Ethnology from the University of Edinburgh in 2010, which explored the functions of music and song within Scots and Gaelic oral narrative, and has since worked as a learning officer at the newly opened Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Her AHRC funded PhD will look at collective memory in the Scottish Borders around 1800, with particular focus on the cultural context of the Minstrelsy texts.

Contact Lucy

Project Interns

Our project interns have been supported by the Erasmus programme. Our current interns are Jessica Faecks and Jan Gobrecht.