Welcome!
These pages will provide you with information about the Landscapes and Lifescapes project which uses links past rural development in the Scottish Highlands to its global context and its present-day legacies.
This interdisciplinary and collaborative project uses the themes of ‘landscape’ (particular places which have developed through the interaction of people and their surrounding environment) and ‘lifescape’ (individual lives as they have stretched across the Atlantic, meeting, crossing and separating again to form a collective biographical web) to establish pathways for using research and knowledge transfer to broaden understandings of how the historical processes of rural development have shaped the present.
In Phase I of the Landscapes and Lifescapes project, we are considering links forged between the Scottish Highlands and the Caribbean to understand more about the connections between historic rural development and globalisation. In the case of the Scottish Highlands, this often meant some Highlanders engaging with the economic exploitation of other vulnerable regions and peoples elsewhere in the world.
By working with this legacy, through the meaningful collaboration of academic researchers, third sector practitioners and the local community, we can develop a more critical understanding of the diverse character of historic rural development. Not only will this illuminate new pathways towards more sustainable and just development for the future, but it demonstrates the value of history.
We are very grateful to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for providing the research workshop funding required for getting this project off the ground.