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AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies

AHRC

Enquiries: ahrcciss@abdn.ac.uk

Research Projects | Historical context | Phase One Outcome

Overview

The AHRC Centre has established a partnership of three institutions – Aberdeen, Queen’s Belfast and Trinity Dublin – with unrivalled expertise in the fields of Irish and Scottish culture. It promotes high-quality single-discipline, comparative and interdisciplinary research, and undertakes postgraduate training with special reference to history, literary and cultural studies, and the languages of Ireland and Scotland.  At a time of significant constitutional change within Britain and Ireland it provides an informed understanding of the historical and cultural influences which have shaped relationships between Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Phase One of the Centre’s work (2001-05) delivered successful outcomes to 14 research projects across the disciplines of history, language and literature. The success of Phase One led the award of a further £1.34m for Phase Two of the centre’s activity. In announcing the award, Professor Geoffrey Crossick, Chief Executive of the AHRC said.

"This will be the largest single award that the AHRC has ever made, and it will enable the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies to develop its leading international position in what is a critically important field of research."

The work of Phase Two is entirely comparative in nature. It aims, from five key strands of research, to develop theoretical perspectives on the study of Ireland and Scotland which will provide an effective foundation for the future study of both countries and provide a model for other such comparative studies of linked cultures.

Phase Two Projects

– Irish and Scottish diasporas from the 1600s to the present, led by Dr Michael Brown (Aberdeen)

– The role of Jacobitism in the development of Scotland’s commercial and imperial links from 1680-1830, led by Professor Allan MacInnes (Aberdeen) in conjunction with researchers at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich

– The impact on the United States and the countries of the British Empire of intellectual migration from Scotland and Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, led by Professor Cairns Craig (Aberdeen)

– A comparative study of twentieth-century Irish and Scottish poetry, led by Professor Edna Longley and Dr Fran Brearton (Queen’s, Belfast)

– The development of representations of dialect in the novel in Ireland and Scotland in the nineteenth century, led by Professor David Hewitt and Dr Barbara Fennell (Aberdeen)

To these projects will be linked four postdoctoral fellows and four PhD students as well as a programme of visiting fellowships which will bring scholars from across the world to work in Aberdeen over the next five years.

 

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