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Staff Profiles

Professor Annie Tindley

Head of School

  • Email: annie.tindley@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 2086490
  • Address: Room 1.34
    School of History, Classics and Archaeology
    Armstrong Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Annie is Professor of British and Irish Rural History and since November 2020 the Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. She joined Newcastle in September 2016 and from December 2017-December 2020 was the Consortium Director for the AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (http://www.northernbridge.ac.uk). Annie completed her MA (2001), MSc by Research (2002) and PhD (2006) in History at the University of Edinburgh. She has held posts at the University of Aberdeen, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Dundee.

Her particular research interests revolve around land ownership, land reform and the aristocratic and landed classes from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries in the Scottish, Irish, British and imperial contexts. She has published widely on the ways in which landed elites defined and translated their power – territorial, political, social, financial – across their estates, the domestic political world of Westminster, and into the imperial context as governors and legislators. She has also worked extensively with other disciplines, including design, water engineering and visual arts. She also champions working outwith the academy in all capacities, including policy work for the Scottish Government and adult and lifelong learning activities and her research impact work has been submitted in both REF2014 and REF2021. In 2015 she established and became the first director of the Centre for Scotland's Land Futures (http://www.scotlandslandfutures.org), an inter-institutional and interdisciplinary research centre, and established an interdisciplinary book series, Scotland's Land, with Edinburgh University Press (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-scotland-s-land.html). She is a co-editor of the journal Rural History, a trustee of the Natural History Society of Northumberland and the Northumberland Archives Trust and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9437-6329 

Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=O94thPAAAAAJ 


Research

Annie's particular research interests lie in the history and contemporary legacies all land issues, including landownership, land reform, land use and management. Her focus has been primarily on the aristocratic and landed classes, landed estates and their management from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries in the Scottish, Irish, British and imperial contexts. Her first book examined western Europe’s largest landed estate in the later nineteenth century – the Sutherland estate – tracking its evolving priorities, powers and drivers under a framework of ‘decline and fall.’ As such, the book made an important contribution to the rather neglected historiography of the rural past, particularly that of landed elites.

Annie’s current major research project, and the subject of her third monograph, is to examine the imperial dimension of British landed aristocrats, their estate management, responses to land reform and the nature of imperial governance and connection, through the life and career of Lord Dufferin and Ava, an Ulster landowner and imperial governor and diplomat. Annie has also worked on a number of collaborative, interdisciplinary projects with scientists, water engineers, practising medics and designers, looking at areas as diverse as the impact of river morphology on social history and the history of healthcare provision in the Highlands. She has also written extensively on the nature of design and technology in the nineteenth century, in the British and imperial contexts.

With the aim of building up a community of scholars, communities and key rural stakeholders, in 2015 Annie established and became the first director of the Centre for Scotland’s Land Futures (www.scotlandslandfutures.org). This Centre, jointly hosted by the University of Dundee, the University of Stirling and the University of the Highlands and Islands, seeks to support and develop research, teaching and engagement/impact activities on Scotland’s land issues, primarily from arts and humanities perspectives. Annie is now an associate of the Centre and has established an interdisciplinary book series, Scotland’s Land, for Edinburgh University Press (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/books/subjects/scottish-studies). She is co-editor of the journal Rural History, an office-bearer for the Scottish History Society and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Teaching

Annie is an experienced and innovative teacher, dedicated to the principles of research-led teaching, and has a strong track record in developing innovative approaches, via blended and distance learning, particularly at PGT level.

Annie teaches and researches on the following key areas, and would be interested to hear from potential doctoral students and fellow academics looking to pursue research on:

  • Aristocratic families and the history of landed estates in Britain and Ireland
  • Imperial history (Britain, Ireland and the Empire)
  • British and Irish aristocrats in the Empire, c.1790-1945; researching the links between landed estate management, land reform in the international context and imperial governance.
  • Modern Scottish history (1707-1945)
  • Social history of modern Britain and Ireland
  • History of the modern Scottish Highlands (social, economic, political)
  • Agricultural and rural history

Broadly then, Annie researches and teaches social and economic history, and has a strong track record in collaborative work, both with other historians, and academics from a wide range of other disciplines. This includes work on modern rural history, particularly that of landed estates, through estate archives and more recently and in collaboration, through mapping archives; the history of health and healthcare provision in remote and rural Scotland; environmental history; in collaboration with scientists and engineers; the nature of creativity and innovation in Britain and the Empire in the nineteenth century.

Publications