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Starts: 19:00
Inverness Field Club lecture
Lecture Theatre at Inverness College UHI at 7 p.m. on Wednesday 19th February 2020. Please note the 7 p.m. start time.
The speaker is last year's Bursary winner, Dr Elizabeth Ritchie of the UHI Centre for History, Dornoch. Her topic is 'A Highland Manhunt: exploring and analysing Highland graveyards'.
Elizabeth Ritchie has been exploring ‘masculine identity’ in Highland graveyards, looking at occupations and professions on 19th-century gravestones and memorials, and analysing that data.
She says:
“It was once claimed that there is too much Highland History. I would agree that we know a tremendous amount about certain topics such as the Jacobites and the Clearances, and maybe emigration, but in terms of themes which have been pursued elsewhere in the western world, Scotland is about twenty years behind, and the Highlands even further. One of these subjects is gender, specifically masculinity. There are plenty of stereotypes about Highland men, but I am interested in how ordinary men thought and felt about themselves, what social expectations there were, and what ideals they held. I enjoy exploring graveyards and it struck me that the inscriptions might give us clues about male identity. The budget I received from the Inverness Field Club Bursary enabled me to travel to a number of graveyards outside my locality and this talk explores four of the key aspects of male identity that I discovered through studying the inscriptions on nineteenth-century headstones.”
"I joined the Centre for History in April 2009. I am currently the programme leader for the undergraduate history courses. My PhD was undertaken with the Department of History of Guelph University, Ontario, on ‘The faith of the crofters: Skye and South Uist, 1793-1843.’ When I'm not reading about them, I can often be found cycling around the countryside thinking about the people who used to live there: how they organised their settlements and used the land; what they believed; how they were connected to each other and other parts of the world; and what their family lives were like."
Elizabeth presented a brief account of her initial research at our annual Anniversary Lunch in 2018, and we are looking forward to seeing the results of her further research. It should be an entertaining and informative talk.