A Scottish CALENDAR in Australia 2015

People now commonly talk of the Scottish Diaspora but what do we mean by Diaspora? How does it differ from migration? Were the experiences of Scots in different countries different from one another and if so in what ways? This paper will look at the history of Scots in a number of different overseas countries and compare them with Scots in Australia. It will conclude by considering the traditions of tapestry making and what the Diaspora tapestry may tell us about how Scots in different countries today perceive their Scottishness.

Professor Sybil Jack is an economic historian whose research focus was on Europe during the 16th and 17th century. She taught in the History Department at the University of Sydney. Over many years she taught students and supervised theses on topics including Scottish history, early Modern Europe and early Modern England.

This lecture on Demystifying DNA explains Y-chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA tests, and what can be cleaned from taking a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) test.

As a genealogist and heraldist, Chris Lindesay has long had an active interest in DNA studies and what advances this brings to the family historian. He has written a number of articles on DNA testing, published by the Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra, and the Clan Lindsay Society in Edinburgh, and is an active member of the Lindsay International DNA project. Chris presented a paper at the 22nd International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences at St Andrews University in 2006 on the DNA, genealogy, family history and heraldry of the Lindsays.

St Kilda was the most remote inhabited island in Britain, thirty miles out in the Atlantic off the Outer Hebrides. In 1852 a third of the entire Gaelic-speaking population of St Kilda suddenly emigrated to Port Phillip in Australia. They were a tiny speck in the vast emigrations of the mid nineteenth century. Their very unusual origins, their grim voyage and their reception in Australia, provide a special story in the annals of Scottish Australia.

Eric Richards is Emeritus Professor of History at Flinders University in Adelaide. He publishes widely on British history, recently Debating the Highland Clearances (Edinburgh University Press 2008). He is also author and editor of a range of books on migration history, notably his broad survey: Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (2004). His Destination Australia: Migration to Australia since 1901 (UNSW Press, Sydney, 2008 ), won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award for 2009. In 2013 he edited On the Wing: Mobility before and after Emigration to Australia. (Anchor Books). In 2014 he was Carnegie Trust Centenary Professor at the new University of the Highlands and Islands, based at Dornoch and Inverness. He mainly researches on the Highland Clearances and also the history of international migration since 1700.

In this talk Prof. Brawley will reflect on his own family history. William Brawley was his grandfather. After a somewhat unusual chain of events he found himself on the Western Front in 1918. The Great War had already changed the direction of his life and his wartime service in France and later India would send him on a journey of personal discovery that would define his life and would also impact on the lives of his children and his children's children. Prof. Brawley's talk will reflect on his family history as he has cast the eye of an academic historian over his family's past and attempted to distill truth from mythology.

Sean Scott Brawley is Professor of Modern History and Head of the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. He was formerly Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. His most recent book (co-authored with Chris Dixon) is The South Seas: A Reception History from Daniel DeFore to Dorothy Lamour (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).