Olivia Mary Dunderdale

I began my PhD in October 2023, under the supervision of Dr Amy Blakeway (University of St Andrews) and Dr Alan R. MacDonald (University of Dundee). My research investigates gender and popular politics in the northern Scottish burghs of Banff, Elgin and Inverness between c.1540 and 1603, using under-researched archival material to investigate governance and renegotiations of power. As crossroads between Highland and Lowland cultures, these burghs offer unique perspectives for the investigation of popular political languages, gender and disorder, an area of study that is largely restricted to a post-seventeenth century context in current historiography. My thesis aims to position urban inhabitants as political protagonists in this gendered political culture, enhancing understanding of the exercise and experience of power in sixteenth-century Scotland, by asking first, how burgh governance took place in northern Highland burghs, and second, what methods, strategies and spaces urban inhabitants employed to renegotiate power. I am grateful to the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (AHRC) for fully funding this research.

I am currently preparing an edition of the first volume of the Forres Burgh Court Book, 1575-1591 for publication with the Scottish Record Society in 2027. I am also co-lead in a current digital humanities project to produce editions of the St Andrews Burgh Records, funded by the Burnwynd Trust. This pilot project will produce an edition of the first extant volume of the burgh court books (1656-71) using a combination of researcher transcription and AI-software.

In 2025, I was awarded the Scottish Records Association's Tunnock Prize. My article, entitled 'Reassessing the Record: Northern Burghs, Parliamentary Participation and Local Archives in Early Modern Scotland, 1543-1605', will be published in the society's journal, Scottish Archives. In 2026, I was also awarded the Scottish History Society's Rosebery Prize for my edition of the Accounts of the Common Good of Elgin, 1570-1620. I am currently preparing a full transcription and introduction to this manuscript for publication as a standalone volume. In 2026, I was nominated for a Watson-Arnott Award in Research Excellence in the Postgraduate Researcher Achievement category.

I have attended the University of St Andrews since 2018, completing a MA  in Modern History in 2022 (First Class with Honours) and an MLitt in Early Modern and Reformation History in 2023 (Distinction). My MLitt study, generously fully funded by a Santander-St Leonard's Masters Scholarship and an Andrew Craig and Mark Bunyan Scholarship in Early Modern History, explored the construction and negotiation of community in post-Reformation Dundee. More broadly, I am interested in all aspects of early modern Scottish history, particularly the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots and the activities and archives of Scottish noblewomen in the sixteenth-century. Other key areas of interest include English popular politics and sedition. 

In the 2024/25 academic year, I was a Tutor on ME1006: The Kingdom of the Scots, c.900-1707.