'Resistance to improvement' investigates how rural workers in the Highlands and Islands defended their livelihoods and ways of life in the age of radical ‘improvements’. Based on five case studies underpinned by rich estate archives, the project focuses on the post-1745 period during which estate residents were increasingly expected to bend the land to the will and objectives of economic progress. These radical changes notwithstanding, historiography to date has largely portrayed rural Highlanders as tamed, deferential to their landlords, and even submissive until they were eventually cleared off the land to make way for sheep. Testing these paradigms of improvement and clearance against the archive of the eighteenth century, the project takes an archivally deep approach to protest, questioning these long-established assumptions. In this talk, Juliette will reflect on the project's research methods, findings to date, and the possible paths to recover, as best we can, the voices and opinions of those who worked land and sea.