Alastair Noble

Thesis title: ‘That Barbarous and Mountainous Country’: The Highlands and Government 1745-1760

Biography

Background

MA (Hons): History: University of Glasgow, 1999.

MA: Eighteenth Century Studies, 2011.

PhD Student: University of Edinburgh (ongoing).

I am a part-time student and I also work for the Civil Service.

Research summary

My research is focused on representations of the Highlands after Culloden. I am examining the way in which the Highlands were understood from a range of perspectives, and the influence these different understandings had on policy in the region. 

Organiser

Member of organising committee for International Congress on the Enlightenment, Univeristy of Edinburgh,  14th-19th July 2019.

Papers delivered

‘The Power of the Highlands’: Rivalries within the Whig Government and the response to the '45. Eighteenth Century Research Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 25th April 2016.

Recognising Local Dynamics: a New Perspective on the Government and the Highlands after Culloden. Scottish History Network Conference, Edinburgh, 27th April 2016.

The Commission for the Annexed Estates and the struggle for control of the Highlands. Historical Perspectives Seminar, University of Glasgow, 18th January 2017.

''The Whigs got it their way': Contesting representations of the Highlands after the'45.' Scottish Historical Review Trust, Postgraduate Research Conference, Dundee, 2nd June 2017.

'From Disarming to Improving - Defining and Describing the Highlands after the '45.' Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society Annual Conference, Vancouver, 23rd June 2017. 

''Compleating the Union'  and the Building of Bridges in the Post-Culloden Highlands.' Bridge: The Heritage of Connecting Places and Cultures, Ironbridge, 7th July 2017. 

‘“The few Villainous Countries”: Contesting Definitions of the Highlands in Post-Culloden Legislation’.  Scottish History Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 19th October 2017.

‘The true state of the Highlands’: The Gaelic Challenge to the Whig Interpretation of the ’45. British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Annual Conference, St Hugh's College, Oxford, 4th Janaury 2018.

Imagined Boundaries and Internal ‘Others’: Defining and Representing the Post-Culloden Highlands. Historical Perspectives, Glasgow, 8th June 2018.

 ‘Barbarity exceeding Glencoe massacre itself’: Contesting Whig History of the Highlands in Narratives of the Jacobite Rising 1745-6, British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Postgraduate Conference, Aix-en-Provence, 4th September 2018.

‘So very inaccessible by nature.’ The imagined isolation of the 18th Century Highlands. British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Annual Conference, St Hugh's College, Oxford, 5th Janaury 2019.

‘Perhaps the Highlanders may imitate them.’ Highland Identity in an Imperial Context. International Congress on the Enlightenment, Univeristy of Edinburgh, 18th July 2019.

‘A Fair and Just Light’: The Understanding and Use of History in the Post-Culloden Highlands. Eighteenth-Century Research Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 22nd January 2020.

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