Islands Matter

The first University of the Highlands and Islands 'Islands Matter' webinars with inspiring guest speaker James Ellsmoor Institute for Northern Studies UHI Island Studies MLitt graduate and the university's Postgraduate student of the year in 2019 and Alumni Award Winner in 2020. James is the founder and director of Island Innovation, a global media platform which offers unique insights into island sustainability, and which has evolved into a community of over 127,000 members. He will talk about what makes him tick, Island Innovation, and about the Virtual Island Summit, which this year had over 14000 attendees with over 500 islands represented.

The issue Doctor Clarke would like to explore, with examples drawn primarily from Shetland, is for whose benefit are we managing archaeological heritage; locals or visitors from outside Shetland; academic researchers, educationalists, interested amateur public, or tourists; the present population or future populations. The needs and aspirations of these aren’t necessarily in opposition, but they aren’t fully aligned either. Where does a just and effective compromise lie?

Dr Simon Clarke works with UHI Shetland in Lerwick, where he also resides. Graduating with first class honours in Archaeological Sciences from Bradford University followed by a PhD in settlement archaeology of the Dobunni Iron Age Tribe and Roman Civitas (centring on Gloucestershire), he has extensive experience in the field. Since directing excavations at the Newstead Roman Fort and Hinterland Project in the late 1980s and 1990s he has since travelled to Croatia for the Hvar Landscape Project, the Kops Plateau Roman military complex in the Netherlands, led geophysics at the Punic and Roman cityscape at Leptiminus in Tunisia and excavated at Pompeii in Italy.

Since joining the UHI, Simon has been involved with supervision & training at the Scatness Broch Village project, has led UHI students on the National Museums of Scotland excavation at Birnie near Elgin, and often works collaboratively with other discipline areas, such as cultural studies, environmental studies, the creative arts and tourism. Simon has been a leading practitioner of VC for teaching and has written a number of academic papers and best practice guides on the subject. Most recently, Simon has been collaborating with Dr Andrew Jennings to investigate the Viking Age promontory fortress at Kame of Isbister, near the northern tip of the Shetland mainland.

Dr Bobby Macaulay was born and raised in Unst in Shetland, but has lived more than half of his life away from his birthplace, spending much of that time in Glasgow. Despite (or perhaps, due to) this, he has conducted much of his research in island settings, including in Shetland, Uist, Eigg and, most recently, Cabo Verde. He is the Co-Lead of the Scottish Islands Research Network and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Small Islands Studies Association.

But is he an islander? And does it matter?

Does ‘islandness’ have an expiry date? If the essence of island studies is to research islands on their own terms, must such research be conducted by islanders? And in this sense, can an islander transfer this identity to other island settings? Such questions relate to researcher positionality and subjectivities, problematising the ‘insider/outsider’ dichotomy and considering the extent to which ‘islandness’ is important in islands scholars, and whether it is an identity which can be retained beyond bounds of time and geography. In this seminar, Dr Macaulay will consider and interrogate some of these questions through reflecting on his previous island-based research.

This is the third seminar in the Islands Matters series.

The first Faroes Shetland Research Symposium of the new academic year, The Legacy of Gudrun Sigurdardottir in Husavik and the Legal Situation in the Faroes in the 14th century, will feature a discussion between two leading historians - Andras Mortensen and Brian Smith. This concerns a case at the Faroese lagting in 1407, where a family from Shetland was involved.

The discussion will address three questions: 1) What was the case about? 2) What does the case say about the legal situation in the Faroes?​ and 3) Does the case support the suggestion that the Faroes and Shetland in the early days of royal administration were organized as a special judicial district in the Gulating’s jurisdiction?

Andras Mortensen ​is Associate Professor of History at the Fróðskaparsetur Føroya . He wrote his PhD on Faroese boat-building tradition at in 2001. From 1989 he was a curator and later, from 2006, Director of the National Museum of the Faroes and Keeper of National Antiquities. From 2011 he has also been a director of Søvn Landsins, Faroese Cultural Heritage. He joined his current position at the university in 2017.

Brian Smith is Shetland's Archivist, a post he has held since 1976, and an Honorary Research Fellow with the Institute for Northern Studies . He is also Shetland's leading historian with a prolific output of publications, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Shetland's historical sources.

This webinar will compare some of the traditional ways of knowing, methods of gathering research, in the Gàidhealtachd and Canada. Traditional Hebridean learning practices honour collective knowledge, over individualism, and dùthchas, the connection of our knowledge to the land. Researchers of all levels (beginner and senior) respond to learning through reflective narrative and traditional story. These pathways to learning and researching are aided by community engagement. Community-based research fuels the attainment of critical knowledge and honours voice.

Dr. Kara Ghobhainn Smith is an educational researcher in Scotland and Canada. Based in Balallan, Isle of Lewis she researches, supervises and writes about narrative inquiry, participatory research and compassionate community formation. She is the organiser of the 'Teaching through Trauma' series on the Island, and her latest chapter in Prof. Judith McConnell-Farmer's book, Metacognition: new ways to think and learn, will be released at the time of this Webinar. Smith is the programme leader and a lecturer in the Tertiary and Higher Education, Research Methods, and Digital Pedagogy courses at the UHI NWH.