Centre for Scottish & Celtic Studies

PhD Student in Scottish Literature

In January 2022, I was thrilled to be awarded a grant of £113.10 from the Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies to cover the cost of a Ten Journey Flexi Pass rail ticket which facilitated five archival visits to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh over the course of the following months. As a Glasgow based researcher, this funding was instrumental in enabling my first archival visit since before the Covid-19 pandemic. 

I am currently in the first year of my PhD at the University of Glasgow, working between the Scottish Literature department and the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic (as illustrated by my first and second supervisors, Dr Corey Gibson and Dr Dimitra Fimi respectively). The PhD project as whole follows a natural progression from my recently completed MPhil thesis, titled ‘Fractal Fictions and Feminist Futures: The Speculative Fiction of Lady Florence Dixie and Naomi Mitchison’.

During the completion of this thesis, I was able to identify Scottish women’s speculative fiction as a field worthy of further study. Considering the speculative imaginary as a strategising device, used by writers from very different time periods to put forward feminist and socialist concerns, enables new light to be shed on their work. My ongoing PhD project seeks to continue this dual approach: highlighting the work of writers which has often received little critical attention, whilst making comparisons which relay the nuances and complexities of the changing political, technological, and literary landscapes over time (as drawn from the rich detail of texts by numerous writers from different periods).

As the research previously undertaken for my MPhil project only concerned two writers: Dixie and Mitchison, I knew it was necessary to expand my reading and extend the scope of my research to unearth additional Scottish women writers of speculative fiction and access related material. After an initial search, I was able to identify six potential writers of interest: Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897), Isabella Fyvie Mayo (1843-1914), Lady Florence Dixie (1855-1905), Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999), Mea Allan (1909-1982) and Margot Bennett (1912-1980).

At the time of my application for funding, I already possessed material on Mitchison and Dixie, and I knew that the earlier writers like Oliphant and Mayo would likely have digitised material available (as their work is out of copyright). Luckily, I managed to track down some of Bennett’s work via the Inter Library Loan system at the University of Glasgow – sourcing two novels from North American universities.

However, after much searching it was apparent that Mea Allan’s work was extremely hard to come by and only available for consultation in the General Reading Room at the National Library of Scotland. My grant from the CSCS therefore enabled me to access her 1943 alternate history novel titled Change of Heart, which I would not have been able to do so otherwise. This consultation proved extremely fruitful, as I am now certain that Allan’s novel will be included and discussed as a key part of my PhD thesis.

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First published: 28 April 2022