Graduate Studies

Scottish Studies

The University of Guelph is internationally rec­ognized for a distinguished Scottish Studies graduate program. Along with the Department of History, there are several academic units with scholars and students studying Scottish topics in them. Mentoring a strong cohort of inspired leaders sustains a bright future for the Scottish Studies program.   

Learn more about History Graduate Studies. 

Student Research Spotlight!

Brenna is a PhD candidate in Scottish History working with Dr. Susannah Ferreira. Brenna completed her first research trip to Scotland in Spring 2023 with the generous support of the Duncan Campbell Memorial Travel Grant and the Frank Watson Travel Scholarship.

"My SSHRC-funded research project examines the late medieval North Sea trade networks of Orkney and Shetland to better understand how both their Norse cultural heritage and contact with Scotland—represented by their economic links—informed the unique social and cultural identity of the islands. My research focuses on the exchange of parchment and incorporates an interdisciplinary methodology that combines close study of documentary records, like Scotland's exchequer rolls, with genetic analysis of animal DNA retrieved from parchment charters. My work contributes to and draws on the University of Guelph’s established expertise in both Scottish history and animal genetics to inform persistent questions of national identity in the Northern Isles." Brenna Clark

^{Pictured: Brenna Clark © Brenna Clark, 2022}

Katherine is a PhD candidate in Scottish History working with Dr. Cathryn Spence. Since beginning her studies in Fall 2022, Katherine has been instrumental in coordinating, along with fellow PhD History students a new lecture series - the Scottish Research Circle, to highlight a blend of senior and emerging scholars in a variety of topics related to the history of Scotland.

“I chose to pursue my PhD at the University of Guelph because the reputation of the Scottish Studies program speaks for itself. I’m humbled to be working and learning with colleagues of this caliber. My research focuses on the Scottish Wars of Independence and the elements of gender present throughout contemporary tellings as well as through epic poems. I hope to highlight how women were not only passive bystanders but actively willing and involved in times of violence within the range of their own autonomy. Women are seen through their familial connections to elite men or working women on campaign. While typically left out of historical narratives, they had a place and purpose. Further I hope to address medieval masculinity and the standards placed on men during this era and specifically in times of conflict.” Katherine Foran

^{Pictured: Katherine Foran © Katherine Foran, 2022}

Megan is a Scottish History MA student working with Dr. Cathryn Spence. In Fall 2024, Megan was the recipient of the Edward Stewart Scholarship in Scottish Studies, which recognizes graduate students in the field of Scottish Studies who have achieved high academic standing. To date, Megan has also received the Clan Fergusson Graduate Research Travel Grant and the St. Andrew’s Society of Toronto Travel Grant to help fund her research trip to Scotland.

“My SSHRC-funded research seeks to challenge prevailing narratives about seventeenth-century Scottish women by foregrounding the role of affect in their religious and political lives. It proceeds in three stages: first, I examine how affect structured a distinctly Presbyterian sense of being and spiritual subjectivity; second, I explore how emotional regimes shaped the lived and gendered experiences of women within the Covenanting movement; and third, I analyze the emotional vocabularies these women employed by drawing on theorists such as Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Barbara Rosenwein, and Audre Lorde. Through this interdisciplinary lens, I argue that these women engaged in forms of affective resistance that disrupted normative expectations of femininity. Their emotional expressions, typically marked by righteous anger, public defiance, and spiritual ecstasy, embodied what I argue as affective plasticity, enacting a kind of affective degendering. Ultimately, I contend that their emotional performances, through testimony, personal covenants, letters, or dying speeches, constituted a masculine-coded mode of embodiment that redefined the boundaries of gender, piety, and dissent in the Covenanting and, more broadly, the Early Modern period.” Megan Gamble

^{Pictured: Megan Gamble © Megan Gamble, 2025}