New projects of IASSL members: Craig Lamont @glasgow.ac.uk has been awarded an AHRC Curiosity Award for his project on memory and care experience in Scottish life-writing. The project is supported by partners across Scotland: @aberlourcharity.bsky.social, @celcis.org, @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social.
New publications by our members: "The Page as Gendered Cultural Recess: Female Creative Anxieties in Margaret Oliphant’s 'The Library Window' (1896)" by @leoniejungen.bsky.social has appeared in "Writing Angst". Available in open access: tinyurl.com/mrmwwpwe
#BurnsSupper225 #LivingHeritage
It was a pleasure and an honour to present a teeny tiny glimpse into my PhD thesis findings at the Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies at @uofgartshums.bsky.social last week!
Many thanks to everyone who tuned in online from abroad or joined live in Glasgow 😊
Do join if you don’t have any plans next Tuesday night yet! I‘d be over the moon 💫
Something personal to share:
I‘m hopping into my hiking boots for a good cause and will be joining the #Edinburghkiltwalk next month in support of Breast Cancer Now 🥾
If you‘d like to support them with a small donation, please click here: justgiving.com/leoniejungen...
Thank you (and pls share 💜)
Something personal to share:
I‘m hopping into my hiking boots for a good cause and will be joining the #Edinburghkiltwalk next month in support of Breast Cancer Now 🥾
If you‘d like to support them with a small donation, please click here: justgiving.com/leoniejungen...
Thank you (and pls share 💜)
One of the greatest chance discoveries in Scotland so far is definitely the wee library near Eas Mòr on the Isle of Arran. Truly a library of lives and stories in its most stunning variety 😍 Never regretted not being on social media less and getting the chance to discover this entirely by accident!
Slightly amended so I can fit this here: I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame! I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one. I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country. This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong. Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues. I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean? Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.
This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way. You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position. Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces. What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly. The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy. Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed. Tanja Bueltmann
My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration
Very honoured to join the Gutenberg Academy Fellow Program as a Junior Fellow 🥳 I’m looking forward to the interdisciplinary exchange, discussions and collaborations over the next two years!
A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope
It was a true joy to present my two papers last week at the “Scotland Within and Outwith” conference at @uofgartshums.bsky.social and at the PGR symposium at the University of Stirling! Many thanks to @laurzzs.bsky.social and Calum Esler for the fantastic organisation! 💫
Absolutely blown away by the beauty of Glasgow - I‘m so grateful to call this place home for the foreseeable future 💫
