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
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
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.
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.
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Articles
- Tindley A. 'This will always be a problem in Highland History': a review of the historiography of the Highland Clearances. Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 2021, 41(2), 181-194.
- Tindley A, Gibbard M, Diamond A. Archives in the landscape? Community, family and partnership: promoting heritage and community priorities through the Argyll estate papers. Archives and Records 2019, 40(1), 5-20.
- Tindley A. 'All the arts of a Radical agitation': transnational perspectives on British and Irish landowners and estates, 1800-1921. Historical Research 2018, 91(254), 705-722.
- Tindley A, Cregeen E. The creation of the crofting townships in Tiree. Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 2015, 35(2), 155-188.
- Tindley A, Wodehouse A. The role of social networks in agricultural innovation: the Sutherland reclamations and the Fowler steam plough, c.1855-c.1885. Rural History 2014, 25(2), 203-222.
- Tindley A, Haynes H. The River Helmsdale and Strath Ullie, c.1830-c.1920: a historical perspective of societal and environmental influences on river management. Scottish Geographical Journal 2014, 130(2), 86-98.
- Tindley A, Haynes H. The River Helmsdale and Strath Ullie, c.1780-c.1820: a historical perspective of societal and environmental influences on land management. Scottish Geographical Journal 2014, 130(1), 35-50.
- Tindley A, Cregeen E. A West Highland Census of 1779: social and economic trends on the Argyll Estate. Northern Scotland 2014, 5(1), 75-105.
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Authored Books
- Tindley A. Lord Dufferin, Ireland and the British Empire, c. 1820-1900: rule by the best?. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.
- Tindley A, Rees LA, Reilly C. The Land Agent, 1700-1920. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
- Tindley A, Wodehouse A. Design, Technology and Communication within the British Empire, 1830-1914. London: Palgrave Pivot, 2016.
- Tindley A. The Sutherland Estate, 1850-1920: aristocratic decline, estate management and land reform. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010.
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Book Chapters
- Tindley A. 'I prefer to establish myself in my own colony:' the translation of aristocratic thinking on land and governance between Highland Scotland and Atlantic Canada, c. 1803-1910. In: Tindley,A; Kehoe,K; Dalglish,C, ed. Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023, pp.15-30. In Press.
- Tindley A. New World, Old Problems? Aristocratic influences on colonial governance and land in nineteenth century Atlantic Canada. In: Kehoe SK; Vance M, ed. Reappraisals of British Colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700-1930. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp.59-76.
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Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
- Tsenova V, Wood G, Dolfini A, Tindley A, Kirk D. Un-authorised View: Leveraging Volunteer Expertise in Heritage. In: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA: ACM.
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Edited Books
- Combe M, Glass J, Tindley A, ed. Land Reform in Scotland: History, Law and Policy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
- Cameron E, Tindley A, ed. Dr. Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871-1945. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2015.