Dr Clare Loughlin

Biography

I am an historian of early modern Scotland, with particular interests and expertise in the histories of religion, identities, and exile in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

I completed my BA in History at the University of Oxford in 2011. In 2013 I commenced a Masters by Research in History at the University of Edinburgh. I remained at Edinburgh for my doctoral studies, where I researched anti-Catholicism within the Church of Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century. I was awarded my PhD by the University of Edinburgh in 2021; I am currently preparing a monograph based on the thesis for publication. From 2021 to 2023 I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Stirling, on the collaborative Leverhulme Trust project ‘The Scottish Privy Council 1692-1708: Government from Revolution to Union’.

I was appointed Lecturer in the Jacobite World in August 2023.

External Memberships

Book Reviews Editor, The Scottish Historical Review.

Prizes and Awards

Scottish Church History Society Essay Prize, 2019.

Wolfson Foundation Doctoral Scholarship, University of Edinburgh, 2016-2019.

Jeremiah Dalziel Prize, University of Edinburgh, 2014.

School Masters Scholarship, University of Edinburgh, 2013-2015.

Research Overview

My research focuses primarily on Scotland, with a particular focus on the revolution of 1688–90 and its short- and long-term consequences.

Key research themes and specialisms:

• Anti-Catholicism and its role in Protestant identity formation
• Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism
• The relationship between Scotland's Church and government before and after 1707
• Religious persecution and exile
• Early modern Catholic and Protestant missions

My PhD research, which I am currently developing as a monograph, explored anti-Catholicism in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century, paying particular attention to the term 'popery' and how it was used and contested by rival Protestant factions. My work as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Stirling focused particularly on the religious policies of Scotland's privy council, including its relationship with the established Church, its interactions with different religious minorities and dissidents, and its attitudes towards Protestants suffering religious persecution abroad. My latest research will focus on Jacobite intellectual, cultural and social networks, placing Scotland and Scottish Jacobites within a broader European and Atlantic context.

Teaching Responsibilities

• Kingship, Clearences And Conflict: Debates In Scottish History HI2524