06 September 2014

Land and People in the Northern Highlands: The Strathnaver Conference

Bettyhill Village Hall

In 2014 it will be 200 years since the Clearances in Strathnaver associated with Patrick Sellar. It will also be 300 years since the renowned Gaelic poet Rob Donn was born in neighbouring Strath More. The confluence of history, archaeology and literature inspires this interdisciplinary conference which examines the relationship between land and people in the northern Highlands. The keynote speakers are Professor Eric Richards, from Flinders University, Adelaide, and Professor James Hunter, from the University of the Highlands and Islands. Panel sessions will inspire discussion on the literature of Rob Donn, emigration, politics, and the changing economy and society of the far north from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. This conference is funded by the generosity of the Carnegie Trust, as part of the Carnegie Professorship which has allowed Eric Richards to be based at the UHI Centre for History for a three month period.

Standard: £35
Student/unwaged: free
Speakers: free
Day visitors: £10 for Thursday; £15 for Friday; £10 for Saturday
The registration fee includes:
Teas and coffees
Lunch on Thursday, Friday and Saturday
Minibus from Inverness to Bettyhill on Thursday and return from Bettyhill to Inverness on Saturday
Friday fieldtrip

The registration fee does not include:
Dinner on the Thursday night
Conference Dinner on Friday night (£20)
Accommodation
Transport to Inverness

Further information from Dr Elizabeth Ritchie elizabeth.ritchie@uhi.ac.uk

Programme
Thursday 4th September
1pm Arrival, Registration and Lunch at Bettyhill Village Hall
Keynote Speaker  James Hunter (University of the Highlands and Islands)
Savages from ScotlandÂ: The North American Dimension of the Sutherland Clearances.
Coffee and presentation on the work of the MacKay Country Project
Panel 1: The World of Rob Donn
William McKay: ´Jacobites at Heart?´
Ellen Beard: ´Rob Donn, Iain Tapaidh, and Gray of Rogart´
Margaret McKay: ´Rob Donn´s World Transformed: Durness, its Land and People 1760-1820´
Evening Session:
Jim Johnston ´10,000 Years in Strathnaver: An Illustrated Talk´
Strathnaver Museum visit

Friday 5th September
Keynote Speaker Eric Richards (Flinders University, Adelaide)
´Not the Highland Clearances: Other Responses to the Highland Crisis´
Coffee and presentation on the work of the Strathnaver Museum
Panel 2: Agents or Victims of Change?
Malcolm Bangor-Jones:´Tacksmen and Small Tenants: Strathnaver in the 18th Century´
Alison T. McCall: ´The Woman MacKay - Politics and Protest in Helmsdale and Brora in the wake of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872. ´
Iain MacKinnon: ´To Bridge the Great Divide Transcending Historiographic Division over how to Interpret the 18th and 19th Century Highlands and Islands.´
Packed lunch
Field Trip:
Part 1: The Clearance Township of Rossal
Part 2: Settlement and Industry on the North Coast
Conference Dinner: Bettyhill Hotel


Saturday 6th September
Panel 3: Governing the Land
Annie Tindley: ´Castle Government: the Psychologies of Land Ownership and Management in North Sutherland, c. 1860-1911´
Ben Thomas:´The Clach“ The life and times of Alexander MacKenzie´
Iain Robertson:´Landscape, Environment and Protest: the Land Wars in the North after 191´
Coffee
Panel 2: Northern Emigrants
Pamela Sharpe:´The Highland Clearances and Emigration to Van Dieme´

Marjory Harper: ˜From the Northern Highlands to the Great White North: The Perception and Practice of Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness since 1774

12.30pm Lunch and Depart