Dundee, Tayport, and the Tentsmuirs National Nature Reserve

My first five days in Scotland have been amazing, with lots of long walks along the River Tay. I love the Tayport Heath and the Fife Coastal Path. Everyone is so friendly and the world seems quieter and more sane with a pint of cider in a cozy pub.

Prototype of the Oxford Cartographers World History Timeline Map?

I was in New Lanark in Scotland a few weeks ago, and took many photos. Robert Owen had a school for his workers’ children, and in the beautiful schoolhouse hung these historical maps. I took a bunch of pictures of the maps, and it was only upon returning home to my study that I realized that they bore a striking similarity to the Oxford Cartographers World History Timeline Map that I have hanging on my office wall. This one is organized by territory at the top, to track the various imperial formations of the world at the time. I wonder if this is where the original idea came from?

Day trip to New Lanark in Scotland, a UNESCO world heritage site

I was so excited to finally visit New Lanark, the home of Robert Owen’s utopian socialist experiments in the early 19th century. This place could be seen as the birthplace of every social movement to improve the working conditions of industrial workers in the last 200 years.

Since it was early April, the place was very empty and we spent a few hours wandering around the exhibits and really reading everything. It was the perfect day trip from Glasgow.

Photos from my quick trip to Glasgow for the 2023 BASEES meetings

The last weeks have been crazed as I made a mid-semester dash to Glasgow to present a paper at the 2023 meetings of the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies. I had some time to walk around Glasgow and visit Calton Books, the “best wee radical book store in the world.”