The Shetland Times

I’m in the Shetland Times! Now I just have to make sure I live up to the expectations...

The talk at the Postgraduate Conference went alright. It wasn’t the same talk as I’ll be doing in Scalloway. This was about whether it was possible to use modern models to do historical research. My conclusion was that it wasn’t impossible, at least. Everyone was really positive, which was a bit surprising, because I really did think it wasn’t that good. Especially since I basically drew conclusions from very little data, and there was a bit of going in circles going on in my argument. But MM let me live, she even nodded a couple of times during the talk. I got a few laughs when I said that I can’t do what LC does, and drive over the Forth Bridge to Fife to record hours and hours of piper kids talking, and ask them about their social behaviour – because my people are dead. The questions from HTL (MG: ‘Who has a verb for a middle name, that’s stupid!’) were answerable, those from CH actually quite encouraging. The PGC was quite a success...