Land, Empire and Identities

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Land is power.

And throughout history, people and communities have seen land as central to life, agency and identities. At UHI Centre for History, the Land, Empire and Identities research group (LEI) explores these themes, focusing on how imperial and colonial structures have shaped the modern world, from the eighteenth century to the present day. The Highlands and Islands are one key focus of our research, but we position the region at the heart of debates about global issues, from climate crisis to land use and ownership, and from geopolitical networks to local communities.

We organise regular events around these themes, and welcome proposals from prospective Post-Graduate Researchers.

The Fyrish Monument in December

Staff content

Staff

Dr Alison Chand is an oral historian whose research currently focuses on the experiences of different British population groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her previous research has studied men who worked in reserved occupations in Britain during the Second World War.
Dr Juliette Desportes' research focuses on the ways Highland land has been managed, transformed, and contested across the long eighteenth-century.
Dr Jim MacPherson is collaborative cultural historian of modern Britain whose research focuses on empire, diaspora, migration, decolonization and the continuing legacies of colonialism in the Scottish Highlands.
Dr Nicola Martin is a transatlantic military historian, specialising in eighteenth-century British imperialism (primarily in Scotland and North America) and Jacobitism.
Dr Elizabeth Ritchie is a social and cultural historian of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Highlands, with an especial focus on religion, education, land use, and the family.
Dr Iain Robertson is a social and cultural historian of local community and landscape change with a particular emphasis on historical and cultural processes shaping the landscape of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Highland Scotland.
Dr Kathrin Zickermann is an early modern historian of Northern Europe whose research interests focus on military and social history (particularly the Thirty Years War), maritime history, and the history of the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

PG Researchers content

PG Researchers

Iain Cameron, Islands on the Edge of Empire': Assessing the Impact of Imperial Influences in Shaping Perceptions of Identity in Northern Isles Society and Culture, c.1700 - c.1850
Vicki Jagger, Landed Elite Evangelical Women in the North of Scotland During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Their Networks and Identities
Jo MacDonald, The Past, Present and Future of a Community-Owned Estate: Building Resilient “Future Heritage” in West Harris
Peter Sandford - Protest and Resistance Studies in Rural North Wales in the Late Nineteenth Century

Projects and Resources content

Projects and Resources

Legacies of Slavery: Churches, Communities and Building a Fairer Future, a collaborative project led by Dr Jim MacPherson with the Church of Scotland to explore ways in which congregations, schools and communities across the country can acknowledge historic links with trans-Atlantic slavery.
Landscapes of Protest: Resistance to ‘improvement’ in the Highlands and Islands, 1750-1820’, a collaborative project investigating how rural workers in the Highlands and Islands defended their livelihoods and ways of life in the age of radical ‘improvements’ which transformed the social and economic basis of Scottish agriculture.

External Collaborators content

External Collaborators

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