🚨 🚨 🚨

The peer-reviewer's report on my book, 'Serious Crime in Late-Seventeenth Century Scotland', is now in, and it's...very positive! A few astute suggestions for tightening-up, but otherwise, an 'excellent' and 'valuable' book, apparently! Relief and champagne all round!

Facebook has reminded me it's 5 years today since we found possibly the creepiest toy ever made buried in our garden. Still gives me the heebie-jeebies...

First journal article submission in a couple of years just sent off. Wish me luck! 🤞🤞

After some unwise purchasing on my last period of annual leave, the population of lego models in my office has grown somewhat...

Reading an otherwise perfectly fine novel set in 18th-century Scotland, but with a major plot-point being that the main character, a miner, is a 'slave' who is 'owned' by their master, explicitly in the same way as enslaved Africans. Having to grit my teeth to get through...

Pleased as punch to have been nominated for a Student Led Teaching Award! I'm always a little uncertain about my abilities as a teacher, so this kind of recognition from students is a wonderful boost!

Learn #scottishhistory at University of Dundee Humanities at UoD. Doesn’t matter where you are. Scottish History Masters by distance learning taught by experts, including Graeme Morton, Allan Kennedy Alan R MacDonald Darren S. Layne Dr Kieran German
Study witchcraft,Mary Q of Scots, Jacobites & more.

Often think the country would work much better if we started from the basic premise that trained professionals can generally be trusted to do their jobs properly without minute supervision.

This Charlotte Gill stushie really underlines how the expectation of accessibility can hurt the Humanities. These are often highly technical disciplines. Nobody would complain about a project in, say, Pure Mathematics being niche and/or opaque!

Further to this wee announcement, happy to take suggestions for any key 'themes' in the recent scholarship of early modern Scotland that should be included. I have my own list, of course, but there's still time to modify it if I've overlooked anything vital!

🚨 BOOK NEWS! 🚨

Very excited - and a little nervous! - to have signed a contract with Routledge to write a new textbook entitled 'Early Modern Scotland: Themes in Focus'. Due 2026. I'm hoping it'll provide an accessible and up-to-date synthesis of the field. Wish me luck!

Sounds exciting! I hope all speakers and organisers will remember History Scotland as part of their output strategy. We'd love to help spread the word about the fascinating Esther Inglis!

The fact that we continue to refer to Regent Arran's period of pro-reformist policy in 1543 as a 'Godly fit' never ceases to make me chuckle.

Think it would be useful, when discussing Thatcher's legacy (esp. in Scotland) if people accepted that words like 'important' and 'transformative' are bot necessarily positive.

Might have news relatively soon about my next book project, which looks like it'll be rather different from anything I've done before. More info when I can...🤐🤐

Sad I can't be at the Scottish History Society conference today - a combination of family stuff and too much marking is keeping me away! Best of luck to all speakers, though. Looks like it'll be a fascinating day!