I am a second year PhD student supervised by Kirstie Blair and David Golide. I am an historian by trade, working in the English department. My project is funded by the AHRC via a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with the National Library of Scotland. 

Project title:

Press, print and nation: recovering popular Scottish magazine culture, 1870 to the 1920s.

My research focuses on popular magazines produced in Scotland in the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century, looking at what made magazines popular in this period, why, and how they became popular. A key aspect in my research is the relationship between people and the periodical press; a large part of my work looks at those who read and contributed to popular magazines, as well as those who owned, edited and worked for them. Overall, my study investigates the idea of popularity in Scottish literary culture, but it also considers the relationship between popular culture and national identity in Scotland: were the two compatible, how did they influence each other, and did this relationship change between 1870 and 1920? Investigating how these magazines constructed a Scottish sense of identity and culture, with strong regional inflections, my thesis assesses the overall lasting influence of popular Scottish magazines within wider British and international publishing contexts. A major case study for me is the People's Friend, established in Dundee in 1869, by far the most popular Scottish magazine of the period but still seldom discussed by researchers. Today, the People's Friend celebrates its 150th anniversary, and is still owned and edited from Dundee.

My PhD is part of a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between the University of Strathclyde and the National Library of Scotland. In my second year I will take up a curatorial internship at the Library working on the digitisation of popular magazines. As an public institution, the Library aims to have a third of its collection digitally preserved by 2025. I will be brining my research experience to the Library's important work on digitisation, public accessibility, and the direction of future research on popular magazines and popular culture at the Library.