Kevin Malloy

Home country: United States

Growing up in a small former mining town in the northern United States I loved to learn about the history of the area and how people were intensively shaping the environment around me. Later, I attended the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities and continued my love of history and the environment by completing degrees in both History and Archaeology, and a minor in Geology. During my time at the University of Minnesota I actively tried to incorporate all three subjects into various projects and research.

Upon graduating I decided to attend the University of Stirling because it provided me with a chance to utilize all of my interests and skills. While there I researched medieval Scottish deer parks and applying historical, archaeological, and geological methodologies to complete the M.Res in environmental history.

These structural marvels have been ignored for too long, and research into their history has suffered considerably from a complete lack of archaeological research. The aim of the project was to begin to progress the study of medieval parks in Scotland forward through actually performing small-scale, experimental excavations. Through the investigation of three sites the argument is made that these structures were extremely important to their constructors (often royal) and were incredibly complex and intricate in nature, warranting much more extensive investigation into their history. (The photograph is of me excavating across the pale of Buzzard Dykes.)

After leaving the University of Stirling in August 2010, I returned to the United States and moved to Laramie, Wyoming. I successfully defended my PhD on The Medieval Scottish Park: A New approach of the Study of a Complex Human Landscape on 5 November 2015. I intend to develop a postdoctoral research project that will examine the different development trajectories of parks located across wide altitudinal ranges and on areas of significantly different land quality.