Historian of early modern Scotland
I work on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scotland, mostly from the documents the courts left behind: what women did, what they were accused of, and how rarely the two are the same thing.
Site in progress
Two midwives, accused
A micro-history of Bessie Dunlop of Dalry, tried in 1576, and Margaret Laing of Paisley, tried in 1697 in the Bargarran trials. Read through their trial records, the question is what those pages can tell us about the everyday practice of midwifery in early modern Scotland — and what the courts made of women who knew too much about birth.
Teaching, research assistance, museum and public-history work will be gathered here. Being written.
An address for correspondence will be published here. Until then, the research-trip notes are the best public trace.