Eighteenth Century Studies people

Maxine is a postdoctoral research fellow on the Books and Borrowing project. Her recently-completed PhD was on Scottish child readers in the long eighteenth century, focusing in particular on the Royal High School of Edinburgh. Her current research extends this work. 

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Jonathan Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Scots Law at the University of Stirling and considers himself to be something of a private law generalist. He has a keen interest in the application of legal history to modern practice and organised a conference on that subject (with Dr. Craig Anderson of the Robert Gordon University) hosted in 2021.

Although principally concerned with research into the Scottish legal system as it subsists in the 21^st century, much of Jonathan’s work draws on the Civilian roots of Scots jurisprudence, examining how the doctrines and ideas received in the formative stages of Scots law can be put to practical effect today and ultimately resolve seemingly ‘novel’ problems.

See Jonathan's research profile

Jim works primarily on James Boswell and Robert Burns, though he also has interests in eighteenth-century political sermons, copyright and eighteenth-century print culture in its widest sense. He worked for seventeen years as the Associate Editor at the Yale Boswell Editions, and is now working on the edition of Robert Burns at the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow.

See Jim's profile at University of Glasgow

Alex is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ‘Books and Borrowing 1750-1830’ project. Alex completed a PhD in English Literature at the University of Glasgow in 2014, where his research on cultures of labouring-class reading and writing drew on the records of a number of Scottish subscription and circulating libraries. Prior to joining Books and Borrowing, he was part of the AHRC funded Curious Travellers project, which considered Romantic-period travel writing about Scotland and Wales. He has published book chapters and articles on various aspects of Enlightenment and Romantic literary culture, with a focus on labouring-class intellectual improvement, and writing about ecology and landscape in the period.

Leslie Dodd is lecturer in Scots Law at the University of Stirling, specialising in private law. He is primarily a legal historian and classicist whose research is focused on historical works of Scots law and particularly on the relationship between Scottish and Continental legal thought in the period 1500-1800.

At present, his primary project is a four-volume translation and Latin edition of the Jus feudale tribus libris comprehensum of Thomas Craig (c.1538-1608), the first volume of which was published by the Stair Society in 2017.

View Leslie Dodd's profile. 

Gema is a PhD student studying under the supervision of Katie Halsey and Kelsey Jackson Williams. Her doctoral thesis studies the reception of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. Gema is particularly interested in the ways in which Scott and Byron exploited the publishing context of the early nineteenth century.

Lucy is an AHRC-funded PhD student, supervised by Emma Macleod (Stirling), Alex Shepard (Glasgow), and David Brown (National Records of Scotland). Her CDA project will examine the Inverness Sheriff Court records in the latter half of the eighteenth century, analysing women and gender in the criminal cases found within, and listing them for the NRS catalogue.

Clare is a postdoctoral research fellow on the Scottish Privy Council Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2020, which explored anti-Catholicism and the Church of Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century. Anti-Catholicism across the British Isles continues to be a major area of research interest. More broadly, she is interested in the history of interconfessional relations, religious architecture, and the relationship between religion and landscape.

Isla is a PhD student researching the Borrowing Records and Visitors’ Books of Innerpeffray Library, supervised by Katie Halsey (Stirling) and Lara Haggerty (Innerpeffray). Isla studied English Language at the University of Glasgow and completed her MSc in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include library history, book history, the history of reading and marginalia.

Phil’s PhD project was supervised by Colin Nicolson. Its focus was on John Adams and US-French diplomacy for the period 1778-1801, and he passed his viva in 2023. He previously completed a BA (Hons) Heritage and Conservation, and a MRes Historical Research, both at the University of Stirling.

See Philippe's research profile

Thomas is a lecturer in European History whose research deals with Russia in the long-nineteenth century.  He focuses on the topic of religious dissent, but is interested in what this reveals about the nature of Russian society and politics more widely.  He is currently examining the relationship between imperial religious diversity and ethnic consciousness, and the ideological and institutional evolution of the Russian autocracy.

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James’s research looks at how Gothic Ideology, in literature and art, has come to shape the perception of ruins on the landscape in Britain, under the supervision of Emma Macleod and Catherine Mills. He also has a keen interest in ruins of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries found in edgelands, wildscapes and industrial ruins.

Gerry is a Lecturer in Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the ‘Books and Borrowing 1750–1830’ (AHRC) project team. He is the author of Dialectics of Improvement: Scottish Romanticism, 1786–1831 (EUP, 2020).

His ongoing research interests in eighteenth and nineteenth-century literary culture cover areas including regionalism, ‘improvement’, book history, and textual editing.

Anna is a PhD student supervised by Dr. Jonathan Brown and Dr. Leslie Dodd (Stirling). Her research aims to provide a comparative analysis of the history, functionality and relevance of Scots law of promise. Her other research interests include Scots private law and legal history.

Katharina is an SGSSS-funded PhD student who works on the social networks of Archibald Campbell, fifth earl of Argyll and chief of Clan Campbell (1558-1573). Her project is supervised by Dr Ali Cathcart (History), Dr Kelsey Jackson Williams (Literature), and Dr Dave Griffiths (Sociology). Her wider research interests include cooperation and conflict in the early modern period, clan structures and government before 1600 and the role of ambassadors in wider European politics.

Stuart teaches American, British, and European history at the University of Stirling and has taught at the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh. His PhD (2010) was on the Loyalist Regiments of the American Revolution, supervised by Colin Nicolson.

Larissa is an MRes student under the supervision of Thomas Marsden. Her research interests lie in the nineteenth century Habsburg Empire. Her thesis investigates the representation of monarchism in Austria during the pre-March period, ranging from 1835 to 1848.

Josh is an AHRC-funded PhD student working on political readers and reading in early-nineteenth century subscription libraries, with a particular focus on the records of the Bristol Library Society and the Leighton Library in Dunblane. His research interests also include the book publishing and printing networks of anti-Jacobin fiction as well as British politics of the Regency era.

Angus’s research focuses on early modern literature and culture, with particular interests in antiquarianism, manuscript culture, book history, the works of Francis Bacon, mercantile culture, and the organization of knowledge. Angus’s eighteenth-century interests include the editing and presentation of Shakespeare in the period, and the culture of commerce. Angus would like to hear from potential students in these areas.

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Shaun is a Lecturer at the University of Bristol, specialising in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century slavery in the US South. He is currently writing his first book which uses the Fugitive Slave Database, a bespoke database of newspaper advertisements for enslaved runaways, to investigate fugitives and fugitivity and to explore themes including enslaved rebelliousness, literacy, transatlantic print culture, and slaveholding women.

One of Shaun’s recent publications is; Shaun Wallace, ‘Fugitive Voices: Artfulness, Performance, and ‘The Other’ in Advertisements for African and African American Fugitives in the Early National United States’ in Katrin Horn, Leopold Lippert, Ilka Saal, and Pia Wiegmink (eds.), American Cultures as Transnational Performance: Commons, Skills, Traces (Routledge, 2021). DOI: 10.4324/9781003048947-8

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