Dr Lizanne Henderson
- Senior Lecturer in History (Interdisciplinary Studies)
telephone: 01387702097
email: Lizanne.Henderson@glasgow.ac.uk
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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5784-9900Biography
Biography
Born in Toronto, Canada, I have a B.A. Double Honours in History and Fine Art from the University of Guelph, Ontario, and an M.A. in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s. I completed a PhD in History and Scottish Studies at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
In 2010 I volunteered with Frontier/Touch Africa on a wildlife and community outreach programme in the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, Gede, Kenya.
I have lectured on cultural history, folklore and critical animal studies in Europe, North America, the Arctic, and Australia. I have been an invited speaker and guide on expedition ships around the British Isles, Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Norway and Spitsbergen, and have appeared on TV and Radio discussing various topics such as the Scottish witch-hunts and the British slave trade.
Editorial Posts
- 2013 to present, Editor of international peer-reviewed journal Review of Scottish Culture
- 2000-2012, Editorial Assistant, international peer-reviewed journal Folklore
Research interests
- Cultural History
- Folk Belief, Popular Culture, and the Scottish Witch-Hunts (wider British, European, American and African witch-hunting experience)
- Scottish connections to the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Abolition
- Human-Animal studies
- Scottish Exploration (Arctic, polar, Africa)
- Scottish Emigration in 18th and 19th centuries (North America, Africa and the Caribbean)
Current projects include:
(Super)natural Animals in the Age of the Stewarts, an investigation into early modern attitudes towards animals and the role of animals in the Scottish witch trials and folk belief.
Picturing Polar Bears, a study into the cultural history, artistic depictions and semiotic uses of the polar bear in environmental education.
Grants
Awards
- 2016 Katharine Briggs Book Award for Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment
- 2014 Visiting International Scholar, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne
- 2001 Michaelis-Jena Ratcliffe Folklore Prize for Scottish Fairy Belief: A History
Grants and Funding
- 2014 Visiting International Scholar. Five weeks at School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne
- 2011 Crichton Research Fund, SIEF conference, Lisbon, Portugal
- 2009 British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, Robert Burns conference, University of Columbia, South Carolina, USA
- 2009 Crichton Research Fund, Robert Burns conference, University of Columbia, South Carolina, USA
- 2008 Erasmus Teacher Mobility Grant, two-weeks at Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany
- 2006-08 CREDD (Centre for Research into Regional Development) Joint award £500,000
- 2007 The Strathmartine Trust
- 2007 Crichton Research Fund, Folklore Society conference, University of Sheffield
- 2001 SCRAN – Associate Project Coordinator - Joint award £25,000 for production of multimedia CD-ROM Scottish Ballads and contributing to SCRAN online database
Supervision
Research students
PhD
• Thesis awarded: Theological Consciousness and Cultural Identity within the Funerary Art of Skelmorlie Aisle
Teaching
Undergraduate
• Level 1 Scotland’s Millennium (Main Campus)
• Level 1 Discovering Scotland's Past
• Level 2 Scotland and the World: Emigration, Slavery and Emancipation, Exploration
Postgraduate
• Sustainable Heritage Management
• A Cultural History of Animals
Additional information
Participation in University Research Centres
- Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies
- Glasgow Centre for International Development
Scholarly Activities
Internationally rated conference papers
- 2014 May 8-10 Keynote speaker at For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation held at Federation University Australia Ballarat Campus and at Art Gallery of Ballarat, Australia, and repeated as a Public Lecture at University of Melbourne. Paper presented, “‘A country of enchantments’: Scottish Observations of Colonial Australia”.
- 2012 May 17-21 Invited speaker Body, Soul, Spirits and Supernatural Communication, international conference of ISFNR Belief Narrative Network and Dept of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, held at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Pécs, Hungary. Paper presented, “Fairies and the Land of the Dead: Robert Kirk’s Lychnobious People”.
- 2011 April 17-21 SIEF (Societe Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore) People Make Places – Ways of Feeling the World. 10th International SIEF conference, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. Paper presented, “Cultural Constructs and Folklore of Bears”.
- 2009 May 28-30 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (SCSC) Geneva, Switzerland. Paper presented, “Rise of the Demonic: Changing Ideas about Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland”.
- 2009 April 2-4 Robert Burns: Contemporaries, Contexts & Cultural Forms University of South Carolina, USA. Paper presented, “Robert Burns and Slavery: The Dumfries and Galloway Context”.
- 2001 August 25 ‘Celtic Scotland’ St. Andrews Society of California, Pasadena, California, USA. Invited Speaker. Papers presented, “Darkness Visible: Witch Belief and Second Sight” and “Fairy Belief”.
- 2000 Aug 26 Scots-Australian Studies Association (Victoria) Trinity College, University of Melbourne, Australia. Paper presented, “Scottish Fairy Belief”.
- 2000 Aug 8 Scottish-Australian Heritage Council Scottish Week Sydney, Australia. Invited Speaker. Paper presented, “Scotland’s Fairy Belief and Ballad Traditions”.
- 1998 Nov 11 Beggars Descriptions: Destitution and Literary Genres International Literary Conference University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Paper presented, “‘A stout carline who begged for a drink’: The Queen of Elfland as Beggar”.
International guest lectures
- 2014 9 May Elizabeth Murdoch Lecture Theatre, University of Melbourne, Australia. Paper presented, “‘A country of enchantments’: Scottish Observations of Colonial Australia”.
- June 3 School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Australia. Paper presented, “ Incidents of Great Importance’: Animal Observation on Nineteenth Century North Polar Explorations”.
- June 4 Early Modern Circle Seminar Series, University of Melbourne, Australia. Paper presented, “Fairies, Angels and the Land of the Dead: Robert Kirk’s Lychnobious People”.
- 2009 8 April ‘Table of Nations: Scotland’ McCormick Freedom Museum, in partnership with the Illinois St Andrew Society, Chicago, USA. Featured speaker in panel discussion on Scottish historical and political topics.
- 2008 June 25 History House Seminar Series, Scottish-Australian Heritage Council Sydney, Australia. Paper presented, “The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt”.
- 2005 April Participant in various events for Tartan Day in New York city. Followed by a Lecture tour, paper presented ‘Scottish Folklore in America”:
- April 5 Dept of History, University of Wisconsin Madison
- April 6 Celtic Studies, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
- April 7 Illinois St Andrews Society of Chicago, Chicago.
- 2003 Sept. University of Simon Fraser, Burnaby, British Columbia. Centre for Scottish Studies Seminar Series. Paper presented, “Witches, Fairies and Kelpies: The Supernatural in Scottish History”.
- 1995-2018 Invited Lecturer in Cultural History, Folklore and Animal Studies aboard Expedition ships (Adventure Canada; Oceanwide; Quark, National Trust for Scotland) to Britain and Ireland, Spitsbergen, Norway, the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and Canadian Arctic.
College of Social Sciences, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, R228 Level 2, Rutherford/Mccowan Building, Dumfries, DG1 4ZL
