Claire Hawes
Thesis title: Kingship, Counsel and Service: Ideas and Practice of Government in Scotland, 1424 – 1513
Supervisor: Dr Michael Brown
Claire is carrying out her doctoral research in Scottish History as a mature student, having worked in many different jobs of varying appeal. She graduated Master of Arts with Distinction from the Evening Degree course at the University of St Andrews, which she completed while working full time. After a brief interlude and a Professional Graduate Diploma in Education she returned to take up a funded place on the Master’s programme in Scottish Historical Studies at St Andrews, again graduating with distinction, during which she wrote a dissertation on the political context of a piece of fifteenth-century advice poetry known as ‘The Harp’.
Her research looks at the political culture of Scotland in that period, with a focus on the interaction of political concepts with the language of their expression, how this influences, and is influenced by political action, and ultimately what the language used to discuss and record politics can tell us about contemporary values, attitudes and thought, particularly in relation to the theory and practice of kingship and government. Her methodology centres on the analysis of language from a wide range of sources - records, bonds and correspondence as well as poetry, chronicles and mirrors for princes – in order to gain a fuller picture of how politics were conceptualised, discussed, carried out and recorded in fifteenth century Scotland. This work endeavours to create a counterpoint to the substantial body of research which now exists on personal kingship and crown-magnate relations in late medieval Scotland.
Claire’s research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Academic Papers
- ‘Community Council? The Language of Politics in the Burgh of Aberdeen, c.1440-1490’ at The Politics of Counsel and Council in Britain, 1400-1700, University of St Andrews, October 2012
- ‘Scottish Political Dialogue in the Later Fifteenth Century: Discourses of Authority in the Burgh of Aberdeen’ at Representations of Authority to 1707: Scotland and her Nearest Neighbours, University of Stirling, August 2012
- ‘The Poet, the Physician and the Priest: A Piece of Political Punditry from the Later Fifteenth Century’ at the Institute of Scottish Historical Research Reading Weekend, Largs, March 2012
Teaching
- Tutor: Medieval Scotland, 1100-1513 (SC1901) University of St Andrews Evening Degree Programme, from September 2012
- Tutor: Scottish Studies Summer Programme, University of St Andrews, 2012
Administration
- Co-organiser: Workshop on The Politics of Council and Counsel in Britain, 1400-1700, University of St Andrews, October 2012
- Section Editor: Bibliography of British and Irish History, Institute of Historical Research, from August 2012
- Organiser: Institute of Scottish Historical Research Reading Weekend, April 2013