Ewan Allinson

This 3-year a-disciplinary arts research project, will discover, document, and illuminate, the granular knowledge, understandings, and experience, of land that tenant farmers, shepherds, gamekeepers, stalkers, and other landworkers, possess across upland estates in Angus. The project seeks to provide a philosophical foundation for the evidence base used, and the expertise developed by, these landworkers. In doing so, it seeks to make a strategic intervention into the hot topic of land-use/land management/ Just Transition issues in Scotland by radically opening up the parameters of the nature-expertise required in addressing our nature crises. 

The ambition is to understand and demonstrate the capacity of landworkers in the Angus Glens, and by extension rural communities across Scotland, to contribute, not only as keyworkers, but as key decision-makers, in the national response to the climate and biodiversity crises. Established qualitative methodologies will be used to gather and analyse multiple sources of decision-grade data and to contextualise this within the rural culture that underpins and sustains this grassroots knowledge bank. Above all, by listening to landworkers’ testimony, the research will give voice to what landworkers know, how they know it, what they do with it, and what they value, in all its breadth and depth. 

Alongside a written PhD thesis, an exhibition – Animism Angus - combining stonecarving, drystone forms, sound art, and moving image will create an immersive imaginary through which to voice the metaphysical, aesthetic, and spiritual dimensions of landwork as revealed through the research. 

Names of Supervisors: Prof Mary Modeen (DJCAD), Dr. Tina Röck (Philosophy, UoD), Prof Annie Tindley (History, University of Newcastle)