Professor Steven Reid
- Professor of Early Modern Scottish History and Culture (History)
telephone:
01413304149
email:
Steven.Reid@glasgow.ac.uk
Room 301, History, 9 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3849-2875Research interests
My research interests lie broadly in the intellectual, political and religious history of Scotland between c. 1450 and c. 1650, especially the life and reign of James VI in Scotland (1567-1603). I also have a strong secondary interest in Mary Queen of Scots, particularly her relationship with James and the way she has been remembered and reimagined in the centuries since her removal from the Scottish throne. I would be happy to supervise postgraduate research in any of the following areas:
- The life and reign of King James VI and I (1567-1625).
- The life and reign of Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1567/1587), and any aspect of her cultural afterlife.
- Latin texts by Scottish authors and the role of Latin in Scottish cultural life, c.1480-1700.
- The career and writings of the divine and educational reformer Andrew Melville (1545-1622).
- The Protestant reform of Scottish higher education, c.1560-1625.
- Developments in the Scottish church, c. 1450-c. 1650.
- The impact of the European Renaissance and Reformation on Scotland, and vice versa.
My most recent monograph, The Early Life of James VI: A Long Apprenticeship, 1566-1585 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2023) is the first detailed narrative of James’ childhood and rise to power, and fundamentally re-assesses James' early court, household, his relationship with his mother and key favourites, and the factional struggles of this period.
I am currently working on a short monograph on the life and career of Archbishop Patrick Adamson (1537-1592), which has a stronger emphasis on church-state relations in the first three decades after the Scottish Protestant Reformation of 1560.
Research groups
Grants
Since 2015 I have been co-investigator (with Anne Dulau-Beveridge of the Hunterian) on a large interdisciplinary project entitled ‘“In my end is my beginning”: the memorialisation and cultural afterlife of Mary Queen of Scots, 1567-present’. This project assembled over 40 academics, curators, writers and artists to examine why Mary Queen of Scots remains such an enduring subject of public fascination, despite the fact that she was only active as queen of Scotland for six years between 1561 and 1567. The project also looks at the ways in which Mary has been remembered and portrayed in Scotland over the centuries since her abdication, and how the view of her has changed in accordance with shifting values in Scottish culture and society. The project was funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh between 2018 and 2021, and its outputs so far include a Massive Open Online Course entitled 'The Life and Afterlife of Mary Queen of Scots' (hosted in partnership with Futurelearn) and a major exhibition on Mary’s life at the Hunterian Art Gallery.
Between 2012 and 2015 I was the sole principal investigator for the AHRC-funded project Bridging the Continental Divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland. The project’s main output was a 350,000-word electronic critical edition and translation of a selection of poets from the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1637), the largest anthology of Scottish Neo-Latin verse ever produced. The project also produced an edited collection of essays, a printed anthology of a selection of the poems, and a range of articles (details of these can be found on my publications page).
I was one of eleven researchers on Alexander Broadie's project, funded by a £90,000 Leverhulme Trust International Network Grant, which investigated the history and development of philosophy in seventeenth-century Scotland, and its linkages with philosophical practice in France in the same period. The project included five workshops and a closing conference between 2010 and 2013, and has multiple outcomes in press, including two books, and a website in development which will continue to be updated as an ongoing resource.
I was awarded a Fulbright Scholars Award, funded by the US-UK Fulbright Commission and the Scottish Government, to take up the post of visiting lecturer in Church History at Yale Divinity School between January and May 2012, where I taught a course on the history of the Scottish Reformation and its impact on Scotland’s cultural life. Whilst there I also continued my work on the neo-Latin poetry of Andrew Melville, the results of which appeared in the edited collection on Melville co-edited with Professor Roger Mason.
Supervision
- Brown, Ashley
Fraternity, feuds, and the academic bubble: Masculinities at Scotland’s universities between 1560-1606 - Hay, Emily
Quenis awne hand’: the literary agency of Mary Queen of Scots in shaping her own public image, 1567-1587 - Maclean, Cameron
The Anglo-Scottish Monetary Union (1604-1707)
Teaching
Sub-Honours Modules
• History 1A: Scotland’s Millenium, c. 1000-1999
Honours Modules
• Art, Culture and Patronage in Renaissance Scotland, 1406-1603
• Reformation! Europe in the Age of Religious War, 1517-1618
• The Reign of James VI, 1578-1603 (Special Subject)
Combined Honours/Postgraduate Module
- The Life and Afterlife of Mary, Queen Of Scots
