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Staff Profiles

Professor Annie Tindley

Head of School

  • Email: annie.tindley@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 2085078
  • Address: Room 1.42
    School of History, Classics and Archaeology
    Armstrong Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Annie is Professor of British and Irish Rural History and since 2020 the Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. She joined Newcastle University in 2016 and between 2017 and 2020 was the Consortium Director for the AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership. Annie completed her MA (2001), MSc by Research (2002) and PhD (2006) in History at the University of Edinburgh. She has held posts at the University of Aberdeen, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Dundee.


Her research interests revolve around land issues and rural history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Scottish, Irish, British and imperial contexts. She has published widely on questions of landownership (private, state and community), land reform and land use and management. She has also worked extensively with other disciplines, including design, water engineering and the creative arts. She champions working outwith the academy in all capacities, including policy work for the Scottish Government and adult and lifelong learning activities and the policy impact of her research was submitted in both REF2014 and REF2021. In 2015 she established and became the first director of the Centre for Scotland's Land Futures, an inter-institutional and interdisciplinary research centre, and established an interdisciplinary book series, Scotland's Land, with Edinburgh University Press (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-scotland-s-land.html). She is a co-editor of the Cambridge University Press journal Rural History, the Convenor of the Scottish History Society, a trustee and vice-chair of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, the British Agricultural History Society, the Northumberland Archives Trust, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.


ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9437-6329 

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=O94thPAAAAAJ 



Research

Annie's research interests lie in the history and contemporary legacies of land and environmental issues, including landownership, land reform, land use and management. She has worked on the aristocratic classes, landed estates and their management from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries in the Scottish, Irish, British and imperial contexts. She has also worked extensively in partnership with community landowners, heritage groups and enterprises across rural Scotland, helping to put their histories in the centre of decision-making for the future, for example through her AHRC network on Land Decisions (https://www.land-decisions.org/) and as a Co-I on the AHRC Historic Houses Global Crossroads project (2024-2027) https://treatiedspaces.com/historic-houses-global-crossroads/. Annie's research has been published in leading academic presses and funded by AHRC, NERC and Wellcome Trust, amongst others. Annie has also worked on a number of collaborative, interdisciplinary projects with scientists, ecologists, water engineers, practising medics and designers, looking at areas as diverse as the impact of river morphology on social history and the history of healthcare provision in the Highlands. She researches and writes on environmental history, including as a Co-I the NERC/AHRC Connected Treescapes project (£2021-2024) (https://www.uktreescapes.org/projects/connected-treescapes/).

She has established an interdisciplinary book series, Scotland’s Land, for Edinburgh University Press (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/books/subjects/scottish-studies) and is is co-editor of the journal Rural History (Cambridge University Press).

Teaching

Annie is an experienced and dedicated teacher, working to the principles of research-led teaching, and has a strong track record in developing innovative and interdisciplinary modules and programmes, including blended and distance learning. She has a strong track record supporting and mentoring of ECR and PGR colleagues to advance their careers and attract studentships fellowships, travel awards and other funding from the AHRC, the ESRC, the Carnegie Trust and government bodies.


Annie has a strong track record in attracting funding for collaborative PhD projects, and would be interested to hear from potential doctoral students and fellow academics looking to pursue research on:


  • Histories of landownership, land reform and management/use
  • Environmental histories of rural Scotland, Britain, Ireland and the British empire.
  • Aristocratic families and the history of landed estates in Britain and Ireland and the county house
  • Modern Scottish history (1750 to the present)
  • Histories of alternative landownership models including charitable, community and state
  • History of the modern Scottish Highlands (social, economic, political)
  • Agricultural and rural history



Publications