Dr Kate Wilson is an early career researcher studying the history of culture and place. She currently works at the Scottish Oral History Centre at the University of Strathclyde as a Research Assistant with Professor Arthur McIvor and Dr Yvonne McFadden, developing key projects including The Lost Villages: Oral History of Deindustrialisation in East Ayrshire, Scotland and Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time. She is also developing new Knowledge Exchange projects and partnerships for the Centre. She completed her AHRC-funded PhD in the department of English and the Scottish Oral History Centre in 2022. Her thesis ‘Current living places and future utopias: community writing in Glasgow, 1967 – 1990’ used oral history and archival research to examine Glasgow’s community literature in the context of the city’s urban change and deindustrialisation, illuminating the relationship between culture, identity, grassroots politics and the state in post-war Scotland.
Email: kathryn.wilson@strath.ac.uk
Project description
The Lost Villages: An Oral History of Miners’ Rows and Deindustrialisation in East Ayrshire, Scotland; Deindustrizaliation and the Politics of our Time; Social movements, community education and print culture in deindustrialised landscapes in Scotland and Ireland, 1975 – 1995.
Kate currently works on The Lost Villages project at the Scottish Oral History Centre, recovering stories from miners’ row villages in the Ayrshire coalfield which which were gradually demolished in the 1940s and 1950s as the coalpits began to close. Through oral history interviews with those who remember the villages, the project explores the impact of deindustrialisation and relocation, making an important contribution to the industrial, social and cultural history of Scotland. She also provides support to Professor Arthur McIvor on the DePOT project.
Kate is also currently developing several publications from her PhD research, including articles on post-industrial urban regeneration and print culture, and literary feminisms and working-class women’s writing in Glasgow, as well as a monograph proposal. These publicatons form part of a broader research plan which aims to examine Scottish and Irish working-class print cultures from the 1970s onwards, highlighting the intersections between these respective print cultures, community education and broader social movements within the context of deindustrialisation.
