Professor Christopher Whatley

Vice Principal and Head of College of Arts and Social Sciences Professor of Scottish History

Contact Details

c.a.whatley@dundee.ac.uk

Profile

Since returning to Dundee in 1992, after a spell at St Andrews, I’ve tried to raise the profile of Scottish History at Dundee as well as to play a part in turning the Programme into one of the best research and teaching units in Scotland.  In 2002 I became Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences and a member of the University’s Senior Management Team.  In 2006, I was appointed Vice Principal and Head of College of Arts & Social Sciences.  I also head the University’s Employability Strategy.

I’ve been interested in Scottish history since I was very young.  My interests have always been wide, and have ranged from industrial archaeology, through economic, social and political history, to popular culture and religious belief.  It’s been a privilege to have been paid to explore Scotland’s past and then to share my findings with students and readers of my work.

Teaching interests

With Derek Patrick, I teach a Level 4 module that looks at the Restoration in Scotland, the ‘Glorious’ Revolution of 1689, the Union of 1707 and the Jacobite challenge. 

Undergraduate modules:

• Crisis of Union, 1689-1715
• The Creation of Modern Scotland, 1707-1850
• Restoration, Revolution, Union and Rebellion: Scotland c.1660-c.1760

Postgraduate

I've successfully supervised several postgraduates who have worked on topics in the period c.1650-c.1900 and hope in future to assist more students to embark on research projects in the field of early modern/modern Scottish history.

Research

• Publications
• Research Statement
• Suggested areas for postgraduate supervision

Publications

Principal Books

• The Scottish Salt Industry: An Economic and Social History (Aberdeen, 1987).
• The Industrial Revolution in Scotland (Cambridge, 1997).
• Scottish Society, 1707-1830: Beyond Jacobitism, towards industrialisation (Manchester and New York, 2000).
• Victorian Dundee: Image and Realities (East Linton, 2000), editor, with Louise Miskell and Bob Harris.
• Bought and Sold for English Gold? Explaining the Union of 1707 (East Linton, 2001).
• The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
• History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600-1800 (Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Editor with Elizabeth Foyster
• Dundee: Renaissance to Enlightenment (Dundee University Press, 2009); Editor with Robert Harris and Charles McKean

             

Sample Articles/Chapters

• 'The Union of 1707, integration and the Scottish burghs: the case of the 1720 food riots', Scottish Historical Review, 78 (1999).
• 'Altering Images of the Industrial City: The Case of James Myles, the "Factory Boy", in Miskell, Harris and Whatley (eds.), Victorian Dundee: Image and Realities (East Linton, 2000)
• 'King William's ill years: new evidence on the impact of scarcity and harvest failure during the crisis of the 1690s, on Tayside', Scottish Historical Review (2006) with Karen Cullen and Mary Young.
• 'The Making of the Union of 1707: History with a History', in T M Devine (ed.), Scotland and the Union, (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)
• 'Robert Burns, memorialisation and the 'heart beatings' of Victorian Scotland' in M Pittock (ed.), Burns in Global Culture (Bucknell, USA, 2011) 
• '"It is said that Burns was a Radical": contest, concession and the political legacy of Robert Burns', Journal of British Studies, (July 2011)

Back to Top

Research Statement

My focus is on Scotland from the later seventeenth century through to the nineteenth.  I’m interested in social and economic change as well as the political economy of Scottish development.  In recent years my interests have broadened into ‘high’ politics at one end of the spectrum and towards everyday life at the other.  I have an ongoing interest in the history of Dundee – a research project I initiated in 1999. 

Currently a major focus of my research is on the smaller Scottish towns during the Age of the Enlightenment.  This is an AHRC-funded project where I’m part of a team of five – my main collaborators being Bob Harris (Worcester College, Oxford) and Charles McKean (Dundee). 

Very recently I’ve begun to explore the historical legacy of Robert Burns and how he has been commemorated.  This is also an inter-disciplinary project funded by the AHRC, as part of the Beyond Text programme.  My partners in this project, ‘Robert Burns: Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory, 1796-1909’, are Professors Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow) and Murdo Macdonald (Dundee).

Back to Top

Suggested areas for postgraduate supervision

Topics in Scottish social and economic history c.1660-c.1900

Protestant 'memory' and the role of religion in Scottish politics and society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Aspects of the history of the smaller Scottish towns

Robert Burns: memorials, memory, Burns clubs, legacy

Back to Top