Nicola Martin

I am a transatlantic military historian, specialising in eighteenth-century British imperialism and Jacobitism. I completed my AHRC funded PhD ‘The Cultural Paradigms of British Imperialism in the Militarisation of Scotland and North America, c.1745-1775’ with the University of Stirling in 2019. Having focused on Scottish History, primarily Jacobitism, for my BA(Hons) and MSc at the University of Strathclyde, my doctoral research took a transatlantic approach to warfare and pacification. I joined the Centre for History as a teaching assistant in September 2018 and as a lecturer in November 2019, having previously taught at the University of Stirling and for the University of Dundee/Open University. 

My research is focused on British army officers throughout the long eighteenth century. I am developing ideas raised in my PhD through research into warfare and identity formation. In particular, I am interested in the various ways that militarisation affected understandings of loyalty and imperial subjecthood in Scotland and North America. I am currently working on my first monograph, which investigates the overarching cultural frameworks, individual circumstances, and local conditions guiding the actions and understandings of British army officers as they waged war, pacified hostile peoples, and attempted to assimilate ‘other’ population groups within the British Empire. The book demonstrates the impact of the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 on British imperialism in North America and centres the material role of British army officers in the imperial crisis that led to the American Revolution.

Additionally, I am interested in the role of Scottish army officers within the British Parliament from 1707 and the ways in which they negotiated place and power both in their locality and in London. I have written several biographies of Scottish representative peers for the History of Parliament and am currently researching the 16th and 17th earls of Sutherland during the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Risings.