Through the generosity of the St Andrews Laidlaw program I have been privileged to, over the past 5 weeks, complete the Pāli Level 1 Online course provided by the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies (OCBS). This post…
After five intense weeks of research, I am now in Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Kenya, waiting for my flight back home. My first summer research on elite secondary education in Kenya just finished. I am now leaving Kenya,…
It is a commonly held belief that religion starts wars, but to what extent does war impact religion? My research project is on how, if at all, war changed religion in the ancient Near East, particularly in relation to…
Mediaeval women’s and gender history always present some particular challenges arising from the sources. Women are rarely mentioned, either as individuals or as a class in mediaeval texts; Women almost always had no…
February 1742 signalled the end of Sir Robert Walpole’s twenty-year political career. His time in government was characterised by dominance in both domestic and foreign affairs. However, by 1741 this strong hold on the…
My research is called Scots and the Amazon and I aim to research the lives of Scottish people in the Amazon in the 19th century, and how this can inform us of the bigger picture of British presence and relationship…
May 24th, 1274, Raymond Baussan of Lagarde, of Laurac is sitting in front of an inquisitor, Brother Pons of Parnac in Toulouse, telling the story of his journey to Lombardy, and therefore his adventure into heresy.[1]…
There are many things the Laidlaw Scholarship allows its scholars to do: improve their leadership skills, research interesting topics, travel around the world, meet new friends. What it did for me, however, was…
What better way to develop as a leader than to lead a new society? This was my supervisor’s idea early in the scholarship. After learning to jump through bureaucratic hoops, keep a cashbook, and hustling membership…
On June 1st 1909, two women began work at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. While not the first women to work at an observatory in the UK, they would be the first employed in any permanent capacity at the ROE, working…
