Dr Nicola Martin

Biography content

Biography

Lecturer in History (Early Modern and Modern Scotland, Britain and America) Undergraduate Programme Leader

Woman smiling at the camera

email: nicola.martin@uhi.ac.uk

I am a transatlantic military historian, specialising in eighteenth-century British imperialism (primarily in Scotland and North America) and Jacobitism. I completed my AHRC funded PhD thesis, supervised by Dr Colin Nicolson, University of Stirling, and Dr Matt Ward, University of Dundee, in 2019 and my first monograph, The British Army in Scotland and North America 1745-1775: militarisation on the fringes of the empire, develops that research, demonstrating how the transatlantic process of militarisation influenced how the British army waged war and implemented empire and highlighting the important role that military commanders played in the coming of the American Revolution.

I joined the Centre for History as a teaching assistant in September 2018 and as a lecturer in November 2019, having previously taught at the University of Stirling and for the University of Dundee/Open University. I have previously undertaken work as a research assistant on the ESRC/AHRC Causes and Consequences of Electoral Violence with Durham University and the History of Parliament’s Georgian Lords Project.

Research content

Research

My research is focused on British imperialism in North America throughout the long eighteenth century. In particular, I combine top-down approaches that examine the role of the British army in implementing empire with bottom-up approaches that foreground the ways that Indigenous peoples, French Canadians, and colonial settlers were impacted by, and impacted on, empire. My first book investigated the overarching cultural frameworks, individual circumstances, and local conditions guiding the actions and understandings of British army officers as they waged war, pacified hostile peoples, and attempted to assimilate ‘other’ population groups within the British Empire. The book demonstrates the impact of the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 on British imperialism in North America and centres the material role of British army officers in the imperial crisis that led to the American Revolution.

Publications content

Publications

Books

The British Army in Scotland and North America 1745-1775: militarisation on the fringes of the empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Articles and book chapters

‘Loyalty and Resistance: Whig responses to anti-Jacobite imperatives in the Scottish Highlands’ in K. German and D. Layne (eds.), The Cultures of Scottish Jacobitism [Manchester University Press]. Forthcoming 2025.
‘Inculcating loyalty in the Highlands and beyond, c.1745–1784’, Atlantic Studies, 2023.
‘Lord Loudoun, the Highlands, and imperial subjecthood in North America’, Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 100(2), (Oct 2021).
Several biographies of Scottish representative peers in The History of Parliament: The House of Lords 1715-1790 (History of Parliament Trust). These include Hugh Campbell, 3rd earl of Loudoun, John Murray, 2nd earl of Dunmore, John Sutherland, 16th earl of Sutherland, William Sutherland, 17th earl of Sutherland, James Stewart, 2nd earl of Orkney, and William Home, 8th earl of Home.

Magazine Articles

‘In the Heart of the Vile Race: the British army, the Highlands and the Empire’, History Scotland (July 2020).

Guest Blogs

Several blog posts for ‘A Civilised Nation?’ Project, Scotland’s Futures Forum (2017).
‘The Influence of the Scottish Highlands on the British Army in early America’, The Junto, online (2016).
‘After Culloden’, Centre for Scottish Studies, online (2016).

Book Reviews

A. Mackillop, 'Human Capital and Empire: Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British imperialism in Asia, c.1690-c.1820’, History Scotland (2023).
P. Griffin and F. D. Cogliano (eds.), ‘Ireland and Empire: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty’, Journal of the Early Republic (2023).
K. Linch and M. Lord (eds.), ‘Redcoats to Tommies: The Experience of the British Soldier From the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of British Studies (2022).
J. Black, ‘How the Army made Britain a Global Power, 1688-1815’, British Journal for Military History (2022).
A. Pettinger, 'Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846’, Scottish History Review (2021).
F. McKichan, 'Lord Seaforth: Highland Landowner, Caribbean Governor’, History Scotland (2020).
C. Anderson and C. Fleet, 'Scotland: Defending the Nation: Mapping the Military Landscape’, History Scotland (2019).
J. R. Barrett, 'The Making of a Scottish Landscape: Moray’s Regular Revolution, 1760-1840’, History Scotland (2016).

Teaching content

Teaching

I was appointed a fellow of the Higher Education Academy in December 2019.

I currently act as Module Leader for the following modules, several of which are based on my own research interests:

What Is History? (First Year)
Themes in US History (Second Year)
Jacobites: Patriots, Rebels, or Opportunists (Third Year)
Empire and ‘Others’: the shaping of British imperialism in North America (fourth year)
Undergraduate History Dissertation (fourth year)

I also teach/have taught on:

Empire, Environment, and Identity: Scotland 1600-2000 (First Year)
People, Protest and Power (First Year)
Historians and History (Second Year)
Scots in North America: experience and identity (Third Year)
Emigration from the Highlands and Islands (Third Year)
Public History (Third Year)
Royal Power, Propaganda and Performance in Early Modern Europe (MLitt)
Arguments and Alternatives (MLitt)

Additional Activities content

Additional Activities

Invited keynote speaker for Scottish Association for the Study of America Conference (March 2024)
Secretary of the Jacobite Studies Trust (appointed February 2023)
Grants Officer for the Society of Army Historical Research (appointed August 2023)
National Trust for Scotland Culloden War Stories: ‘Cumberland’s Army in North America’ (April 2022).
Highland Clearances’, Unearthed Podcast (November 2020).
BBC Blood of the Clans (August 2020).
Research Assistant, Victorian Election Violence Project, Durham University (2019).
National Trust for Scotland Culloden Annual Commemoration (April 2018), invited speaker.
‘Scotland 2030 – Technology and Society’ Royal Society of Edinburgh and Scotland’s Futures Forum (November 2017), invited speaker.
‘Negotiating Academic Careers’ Scottish Association for the Study of America Workshop (University of Edinburgh, February 2017), co-organiser.
Scottish History Network (2016-19), co-founder. The Scottish History Network produced a weekly digest of Scottish History news within and outwith academia and organised a State of the Field Workshop (April 2016) and ‘Scottish History: British or European?’ Panel Discussion (August 2016).
Scottish Association for the Study of America Annual Conference (University of Stirling, March 2016), organiser.