Staff

Iain Robertson
B.A. (CNAA),
Ph.D. (Bristol)

Positions
Lecturer

Contact
Email: irobertson@glos.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1242 714581

I began as a historian, became a geographer and now combine both fields of study in my teaching and research. As someone born in England but with a passionately Scottish parent I have a hybrid sense of identity but one that is deeply influenced by a love of history and heritage. My early research focused on the historical and cultural processes shaping the landscape of nineteenth and early twentieth century Highland Scotland. This broadened to include the whole of Britain for teaching purposes. I am also interested in how we can understand landscape as a cultural product, particularly from the perspective of heritage. And if you are interested in heritage then Cheltenham, centrally located for that prime heritage icon ‘The Cotswolds’, is an excellent place to study it. My current research interest is in the contemporary creation of a ‘heritage from below’ in the Scottish highlands.

I am co-editor of 'Studying Cultural Landscapes' published by Arnold.

Undergraduate Teaching
EL102 Management at Work
EL126 Spatial Data
EL165 Resources
EL205 Concepts of Heritage
EL250 History of Modern Landscape
EL306 Heritage and Identity
EL323 Society, Space & Social Science

Other Activities
Member of The Institute of British Geographers Historical Geography Research Group
Member of the Oral History Society
Member of the Scottish Economic and Social History Society
Member of the Agricultural History Society.

Research Interests
The Historical and Cultural processes shaping the landscape of 19th and early 20th century Highland Scotland
The sense of place and cultural identity in poetic and popular representations of place
Contested meanings of 'heritage' as made evident in acts of memorialisation
Social History of local community and landscape change

Recent Publications
Robertson, I. and Richards, P. (2002) Studying Landscapes: cultural and symbolic landscapes in the western European tradition. Arnold.

Robertson, I. (2002)'Their families had gone back in time hundreds of years at the same place': attitudes to land and landscape in the Scottish Highlands after 1918. In D. Harvey et al. (Eds) Celtic Geographies, Routledge.

Hall, T. and Robertson, I. (2001) Public art and urban regeneration: advocacy, claims and critical debates. Landscape Research, 26, 5-6.