This community contains the ePrints and eTheses produced by the History and Politics staff and students. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/51 2026-10-03T07:46:06Z 2026-10-03T07:46:06Z Henry, Lucy Victoria http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38351 2026-09-28T13:35:59Z 2026-01-03T00:00:00Z

Title: ‘According to Justice’: Women’s interactions with the Inverness Sheriff Court, 1777-95 Author(s): Henry, Lucy Victoria Abstract: This thesis examines the Inverness sheriff court criminal processes and assesses their documentary value for historians of gender, Scots law, and social history. The sheriff court represented a locus for Inverness civic life but was not solely an urban institution. Over the period under study, the court made significant efforts towards improving and cementing access to law throughout Inverness-shire, appointing various court personnel throughout rural parishes. This was primarily an attempt to counteract entrenched pockets of resistance to state authority in various areas, particularly Lochaber. It is clear that lower-order Inverness-shire residents were aware of their rights and ability to access the law, and frequently utilised the sheriff court system to adjudicate disputes and to obtain justice in response to experienced harm. This thesis will first examine the institution of the Inverness sheriff court, its place in civic society, and the men who wielded the state power instilled in the inferior court system. It will then analyse a range of crimes for what relevant cases reveal about women’s interactions with this court system, including lawburrows, resistance to judicial authority, and sexual violence. It concludes that while the surviving criminal processes of the Inverness sheriff court are vital sources of information regarding women’s lives in the late eighteenth century Highlands, analysing women in isolation does not reveal the full picture of lower-order legal interactions at this time. Women very frequently collaborated with or were supported in their attempts to gain justice by men in their communities and kinship groups. Therefore, by considering what these documents reveal about community actions and familial support in relation to the law, we gain a fuller understanding of both how the law was administered in the Highlands at this time, and how women’s lives were lived within their communities.

2026-01-03T00:00:00Z Park, Hyeyoon http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38332 2026-09-18T00:32:45Z

Title: Two Narratives of Securitization and Norm Development in Transnational Governance of Critical Mineral Resources: Toward Realpolitik or Sustainability? Author(s): Park, Hyeyoon Abstract: Amid the rapidly increasing global demand for critical mineral resources driven by the energy transition and the AI revolution, critical mineral governance has become an urgent topic at the intersection of security and sustainability. Intensifying geopolitical turbulence from the Ukraine War and the US-China trade war has triggered the securitization of critical minerals, (re)shaping the core norm structure in the current transnational governance architecture. This paper examines competing approaches to securitizing critical minerals and the extent to which sustainability norms are developed in transnational governance institutions. Drawing on securitization and norm literature, this research traces institutional and discourse changes in 15 selected institutions, identified from a mapping exercise of 50 cases. The findings demonstrate two emerging securitization narratives: 1) a hierarchical national security-centered nexus, prioritizing national security norms over sustainability norms (norm-ordering), and 2) a horizontal multi-layered security nexus, emphasizing multiple norms interlinked, such as human rights, sustainability, peace and security (norm-layering). These competing approaches to securitization as a strategic practice of norm-making mirror normative fragmentations around accelerating bloc-alignments in the current geopolitical crisis. It signals a shift in the transnational governance architecture from conventional liberal multilateralism to "Realpolitik" which could foster accountability problems.

Slavin, Philip Fiol, Guillem Mas http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38331 2026-09-18T00:32:27Z 2026-04-03T00:00:00Z

Title: The introduction and spread of plague in the Great Lakes region of East Africa, c.1700–1900: a palaeogenetic and social history Author(s): Slavin, Philip; Fiol, Guillem Mas Abstract: This article reconstructs and explains the introduction and spread of plague in the Great Lakes region of East Africa in the pre- and early colonial period (c.1700–1900). It argues that plague arrived and focalised in the region, which was marked by isolation from the outside world, towards the end of the seventeenth century and in unique circumstances of human migration, triggered by climatic anomaly and environmental factors. The most likely route of introduction was along the Nile, from Egypt and Sudan. Subsequent spread waves, each characterised by different spatio-temporal contours, were triggered largely by anthropogenic and demographic factors (including conflicts and human migration), but it was not until the colonial period that the disease left the region and spread farther east to the Swahili Coast and beyond. The article conjoins both textual and non-textual evidence, including recent palaeogenetic work (the study of ancient DNA), to demonstrate the value of an inherently interdisciplinary approach to plague history.

2026-04-03T00:00:00Z Kippin, Sean http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38267 2026-09-03T00:01:36Z 2026-07-24T00:00:00Z

Title: Populist-inflected governance in a mature democracy: Bureaucratic de-legitimation and executive control in the United Kingdom (2019–2024) Author(s): Kippin, Sean Abstract: This article examines the relationship between radical right populism and bureaucracy in the UK—a parliamentary system with strong executive dominance. While much literature on populism and public administration focuses on bureaucratic capture or constitutional rupture, the UK presents a different pattern in which populist pressures operated within existing institutional arrangements. The article argues that populist governance in the UK between 2019 and 2024 represents an effort to reassert an idealized ‘Westminster story’ of executive control against the messy and complex realities of contemporary policy-making and public administration. Drawing on three case studies—the construction of civil service antagonism (the ‘blob’), reforms to the election management body (the Electoral Commission), and attempts to implement the Rwanda asylum scheme—the article traces strategies of de-legitimation, institutional bending, and policy forcing. The UK case highlights how populist-inspired executives seek to bypass bureaucracy without dismantling the administrative state.

2026-07-24T00:00:00Z