International Summer School

Once you have been offered a place on the programme, we will contact you and ask you to submit your top three research project choices. You may select projects from more than one humanities subject area (History, Archaeology, Scottish Studies, Classics, Information Studies, Philosophy, and Gender Studies), provided you meet the specific entry requirements for each course. Your allocated research project will be confirmed in April.

1. Hidden Histories: Decolonising Everyday Landscapes 
2. Using (and Abusing) History: Narratives of the Past in Modern Political Speechesy
3. The Highland Clearances and Human-animal Relationships in Gaelic Oral Tradition s
4. Objects of Empire and Homecoming in the History of the Scottish Diaspora 
5. The History of Witchcraft and Folk Belief in Scotland, c.1560-1736 

1. Hidden Histories: Decolonising Everyday Landscapes

Supervisor: Gala Georgette

This project invites students to explore how colonial histories shape the everyday landscapes of Glasgow, from streets and buildings to public spaces. Working closely with their supervisor, students will select a local site such as a street name, monument, or green space, and examine how their meanings have been shaped by colonial, imperial, and extractive processes.

Students will apply a decolonial methodology to their case study by questioning familiar heritage narratives and analysing digitised, publicly accessible materials (such as maps, newspapers, and online museum or heritage resources) to examine how their chosen site has been represented and normalised over time. Rather than treating sources as neutral, students will consider how particular histories are foregrounded while others may be obscured, situating the site within wider networks of power and empire. With support of their supervisor, students may wish to include reflective elements in their project, considering how everyday experience shapes interpretation.

Indicative preliminary reading

• Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton University Press), ‘Introduction’, pp. 3-23
• Ingold, T. 2021. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (Routledge)
• Smith, L. 2006. Uses of Heritage (Routledge)
• Smith, L. T. 2021. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Zed Books)
• Terry, N. et al. 2024. ‘Inviting a Decolonial Praxis for Future Imaginaries of Nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree’, Environmental Science & Policy, 151, pp. 1-11
• Tuck, E. and K. W. Yang. 2012. ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1, pp.1-40

Indicative case study example

This project was inspired by a plant container on Byres Road, Glasgow, containing endemic flax from Aotearoa New Zealand. This plant embodies a history of colonisation, ecological exchange, and urban design, illustrating how global histories shape everyday spaces. It is part of the visual environment and a piece of heritage that reflects power relations and cultural imaginaries. Students might similarly investigate local sites to trace the historical narratives and colonial legacies inscribed in such landscapes.

Indicative materials

• Digitised sources such as Trove (Historic Environment Scotland’s online heritage database), historic Ordnance Survey maps (via the National Library of Scotland and PastMap), and It Wasnae Us website and associated resources.
• University of Glasgow library and archives, particularly published catalogues, digitised collections, institutional records, and materials relating to the urban landscape.

2. Using (and Abusing) History: Narratives of the Past in Modern Political Speeches
Supervisor: Larissa Kraft

This project invites students to investigate uses of the past in political speeches of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and to critically reflect on links between history, memory, and power. Whether to justify war or territorial claims, to form a peace deal or make international alliances, political leaders have often referred to the past to rhetorically legitimise decisions that may be fundamentally political or economic. In doing so, politicians cast their own historical narratives, making the past a malleable concept that serves a particular agenda.

Working with their supervisor, students choose their geographical focus (eg. Scotland, Germany, America) and case studies, looking for instance at political leaders’ deployment of historical examples in modern framings of conflict, Cold War, European integration, or self-determination, such as calls for Scottish independence. Students may compare examples, or analyse individual speeches to examine how factors, such as target audience, political context and objectives, influenced the historical narrative presented.

Indicative preliminary reading

• Adams, T. 2022. ‘Sharing the Same Space: How the Memory of the Holocaust Travels in Political Speech’, The Sociological Quarterly, 63.2, pp. 247–65
• Berger, S. and C. Tekin (eds). 2018. History and Belonging: Representations of the Past in Contemporary European Politics (Berghahn)
• Hofmann, S. C. and F. Mérand. 2020. ‘In Search of Lost Time: Memory‐framing, Bilateral Identity‐making, and European Security’, JCMS, 58.1, pp. 1–17
• MacMillan, M. 2010. The Uses and Abuses of History (Profile)
• Müller, J.-W., ed. 2002. Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge University Press) (especially Müller, ‘Introduction’, and Deighton, ‘British imperial memories and Europe’)
• Oddo, J. 2011. ‘War Legitimation Discourse: Representing “Us” and “Them” in Four US Presidential Addresses’, Discourse & Society, 22.3, pp. 287–314
• Rycroft, P. 2022. ‘Whose Past Is It before Us? The Shaping of Identity in Scotland’s 2014 Referendum on Independence’, in Memory and Identity: Ghosts of the Past in the English-Speaking World, ed. by L. Pillière and K. Bigand (Routledge)

Primary Sources

• Kennedy, J. F. ‘Address of President-Elect John F. Kennedy Delivered to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The State House, Boston, January 9, 1961. Also Known as the “City Upon a Hill” Speech’. jfklibrary.org, https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches/the-city-upon-a-hill-speech.
• Salmond, A. ‘“A Good Global Citizen”, Speech at Glasgow Caledonian University, New York Campus’, 9 April 2014. opendemocracy.net, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/good-global-citizen-alex-salmonds-speech-on-scotlands-role-in-world/.

3. The Highland Clearances and Human-animal Relationships in Gaelic Oral Tradition
Supervisor: Niall Ingham

This project invites students to investigate the Highland Clearances and human-animal relationships found in translations of Gaelic oral tradition, such as collections of poetry and songs from the nineteenth century. This was a period of great change in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd (Gaelic-speaking areas of the Highlands and Islands). Not least were dramatic changes in land use and landscape, such as the shift from small-scale subsistence farming to larger-scale farming which is closely associated with the Highland Clearances. Inevitably the Clearances precipitated and coincided with changes in people’s relationships to domestic and wild animals in the region. Gaelic oral tradition abounds with references to animals in a variety of contexts, in songs, poetry, proverbs or stories.

Working with their supervisor to identify a project focus, students may choose to research a particular animal or collection, and may wish to draw on scholarship in areas such as Scottish history, Gaelic studies, human-animal studies, or environmental humanities.

Indicative preliminary reading

• Bateman, M. and Purser. J. 2020. Window to the West: Culture and Environment in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd (Clò Ostaig)
• Cheape, H. 1995. ‘A Song on the Lowland Shepherds: Popular Reaction to the Highland Clearances’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 15.1, pp.85-100
• Fudge, E. 2018. Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes: People and their Animals in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press)
• Robertson, I. J.M. and Rivett, M.M. 2019. ‘Of Necessary Work: The Longue Durée of the Moral Ecology of the Hebridean Gàidhealtachd’, in Moral Ecologies, ed. by I. Robertson et al.(Springer International), pp. 159-87
• Swart, S. 2022., ‘Kicking over the Traces? Freeing the Animal from the Archive’, in Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History, ed. by J. Bonnell and S. Kheraj (University of Calgary Press), pp. 19-48
• Tindley, A. 2021. ‘“This will always be a problem in Highland history”: A Review of the Historiography of the Highland Clearances’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 41.2, pp. 181-94.

Primary resources

• Meek, Donald E. (ed.). 1995. Tuath is Tighearna – Tenants and Landlords, An Anthology of Gaelic Poetry of Social and Political Protest from the Clearances to the Land Agitation (1800-1890) (Scottish Academic Press)
• Tobar an Dualchais – Kist o’ Riches (online database of sound recordings of music, history, poetry, traditions and stories) https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/

4. Objects of Empire and Homecoming in the History of the Scottish Diaspora
Supervisor: Thomas Archambaud

This project invites students to investigate material culture, such as domestic objects, related to Scots who returned to Britain from across the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Scotland was transformed by imperial activity. Scots who came home often adopted lifestyles combining foreign elements with re-imagined displays of Scottish identity, creating a hybrid culture visible in social and political life, and also in architecture and objects.

Working with their supervisor, students choose case studies investigating the material culture of Scots who returned from colonial involvement in America, Asia, Australia or New Zealand. Students may analyse various types of images and objects (eg. paintings, drawings, vases, textiles, weapons, furniture) as well as textual sources (eg. notebooks, wills, correspondence, manuscripts). Projects may investigate how objects reflect colonial ideas, and questions of race, status or family. Students may wish to analyse items from Scottish museums, to consider historical impacts of colonialism and its legacies today.

Indicative Preliminary Reading

• Bueltmann, T. 2013. ‘Diaspora: Defining a Concept’, in The Scottish Diaspora, ed. by T. Bueltmann et. al (Edinburgh University Press), pp. 16-33
• Bueltmann T. 2008. ‘“Where the Measureless Ocean between us will Roar”: Scottish Emigration to New Zealand, Personal Correspondence and Epistolary Practices, c. 1850–1920’, Immigrants & Minorities, 26.3, pp. 242–265
• Finn, M. and K. Smith. 2018. The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 (UCL Press), pp. 1-20
• Kehoe, K. 2016. ‘From the Caribbean to the Scottish Highlands: Charitable Enterprise in the Age of Improvement, c.1750 to c.1820’, Rural History, 27.1, pp. 37-59
• Harper, M. 2003. Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus (Profile), chap. 8 ‘The Temporary Emigrant’, pp. 282-325
• Mackillop, A. 2005. ‘The Highlands and the Returning Nabob: Sir Hector Munro of Novar, 1760–1807’ in Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, ed. by M. Harper (Manchester University Press), pp. 233-256
• Mullen S. et. al. 2024. ‘Surveying and Analysing Connections between Properties in Care and the British Empire, c.1600–1997’, report for Historic Environment Scotland, doi: https://www.historicenvironment.scot/archives-and-research/publications/publication/?publicationId=e192ea9f-0d7e-4745-b499-b0fb010a167a

Indicative Sources/Databases

• Sinclair, J. 1791-1799. The Old and New Statistical Account of Scotland; Drawn up from the communications of the ministers of the different parishes (William Creech, Edinburgh). Accessible at https://stataccscot.ed.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/home
• National Museum of Scotland online catalogue: https://www.nms.ac.uk/search-our-collections (possible keywords: “America”, “Florida”, “Plantation”, “India”, “Bengal”, “Madras”, “Bombay”, “East India Company” etc). Example: East Asian basket with decorated dragon panels, owned by William Fullerton Elphinstone, early 19th century, National Museums Scotland.

5. The History of Witchcraft and Folk Belief in Scotland, c.1560-1736
Supervisor: Nicole Cumming

This project investigates popular culture and belief in the period which followed the Scottish Reformation of 1560. The religious and cultural changes enacted by the Protestant Reformation resulted in an assault on ‘superstitious’ beliefs. Scotland’s witch trials were among Europe's longest and most deadly, something historians have connected to the religious zeal of the Presbyterian Church. The proliferation of trials, and widespread evidence of belief, raises questions about the cultural, political and religious circumstances which led to a heightened fear of witchcraft in this period. There are also questions concerning ‘popular’ religion and the degree to which the church successfully suppressed pre-Reformation beliefs and practices (such as the folk healing of humans and animals, nature worship, and festival days).

Working with their supervisor, students are invited to develop a research project on an aspect of folk belief and/or witchcraft in post-Reformation Scotland, utilising historical sources such as trial and church court records and oral or literary folk traditions.

Indicative preliminary reading

• Levack, B. P. 2008. Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion (Routledge), Chapter 2: ‘Witchcraft and the law in early modern Scotland’
• Todd, M. 2000. ‘Profane Pastimes and the Reformed Community: The Persistence of Popular Festivities in Early Modern Scotland’, Journal of British Studies, 39.2, pp.123-156
• Brock, M. D. 2000.‘Fallen spirits and divine grace: Sermons and the supernatural in post-Reformation Scotland’ in The supernatural in early modern Scotland, ed. by J.Goodare and M. McGill (Manchester University Press)
• McDougall, J. M. 2021. ‘Popular Festive Practices in Reformation Scotland’ in A Companion to the Reformation in Scotland, ca. 1525–1638, ed. by I. Hazlett (Brill)
• Henderson, L. 2016. Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670-1740 (Palgrave Macmillan), Chapter 3: ‘Demons, devilry and Domestic Magic’
• Henderson, L. 2016. ‘The (super)natural worlds of Robert Kirk: fairies, beasts, landscapes and lychnobious liminalities’, The Bottle Imp, 20, pp.1-6, https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/133639/7/133639.pdf.
• Wilby, E. 2013. ‘‘We mey shoot them dead at our pleasur’: Isobel Gowdie, Elf Arrows and Dark Shamanism’ in Scottish Witches and Witch-Hunters, ed. by Julian Goodare (Palgrave Macmillan)

Primary sources

• Goodare, J. et. al., 'The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft', http://witches.hca.ed.ac.uk and ‘Map of Scottish Witchcraft’ https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk.
• Larner, C. et. al. 1977. A Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft (University of Glasgow), https://archive.org/details/a-source-book-of-scottish-witchcraft-1977.

This course aims to:

• Provide an opportunity to undertake an independent research project in the Humanities under supervision.
• Introduce approaches to research and analysis in the Humanities
• Develop professional skills in research and analysis and transferable skills in oral and written argument.

 By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Assess scholarly literature and available sources to formulate a viable research question in the Humanities
• Contextualise and critically analyse sources to produce a convincing argument
• Express analysis and argument in written and oral forms

Weekly seminars specific to humanities (these may include group visits to the Glasgow University and Hunterian collections, as well as the course conference) and twice weekly supervisor meetings.

• GPA of 3.0 (or equivalent)
• you should be currently enrolled at an international higher education institution.
• two years of study in university-level Humanities courses with a major or minor in a relevant subject (Applicants who have only attended university for one year will be considered if strong performance in a relevant Humanities subject can be demonstrated).

If your first language is not English, you must meet our minimum proficiency level:

• International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Academic module (not General Training) overall score of 6.0, with no sub test less than 5.5
• we also accept equivalent scores in other recognised qualifications such as ibTOEFL, CAE, CPE and more.

This is a guide, for further information email internationalsummerschools@glasgow.ac.uk