Research Leave: British writing and the North 1760-1830

1. An understanding of the cultural uses of the term ‘North Britain’ in the period 1760 to 1830, focusing on the position of Scotland as a Northern nation in relation to Britain and Europe.

2. The importance of theories of the history of language in the construction of national identities in Britain in the period.

3. How modern theories of space and place can be used to understand geography abd national identities in the Romantic period

4. The first study of the Shetland poet Margaret Chalmers and the first consideration of Orkney and Shetland in the Romantic period.

5. New ways of reading Walter Scott, Robert Burns and James Hogg in terms of their configuration of geographic location.