Tom Devine

Thomas Martin "Tom" Devine OBE FRSE FRHistS FBA (born 1945, Motherwell) is a Scottish historian. His main research interest is the history of the Scottish nation since c.1600 and its global connections and impact.[1]

Tom Devine was educated at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, from 1964 to 1968, and graduated with first class honours in Economic and Social History, followed by a PhD and D.Litt. He rose through the academic ranks from assistant lecturer to Reader, Professor, Head of Department, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He was Deputy Principal of the University from 1993 until 1997. In 1998 he accepted the Directorship of the world's first Centre of advanced research in Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen (the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies), which was formally inaugurated by President Mary McAleese of Ireland on St Andrew's Day 1999.^{[citation needed]} Over the following five years, over £2.5m were raised for the Centre's research programmes from AHRC - which led to the establishment of the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, funded competitively over 2 phases, - the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy, and a further £1.6m endowment gifted from the Glucksman family in the USA for a Research Chair in Irish and Scottish Studies, which Devine held as founding Professor until 2005.^{[citation needed]}

In April 2005, he was appointed to the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, widely acknowledged as the world’s premier Chair of Scottish History,^{[citation needed]} which he took up in January 2006. In 2008 he became Director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at Edinburgh, established by an external endownment of £1 million pounds by a leading Scottish fund manager and his family. This is reckoned to be the single largest private donation ever made to a UK university for the development of historical studies.^{[citation needed]}Devine retired from the Fraser Chair in the summer of 2011 but returned to the University of Edinburgh in January 2012 as Personal Senior Research Professor in History.

He is the author or editor of some thirty books and numerous articles on topics such as emigration, famine, identity, Scottish transatlantic commercial links, urban history, the economic history of Scotland, Empire, the Scottish Highlands, the Irish in Scotland, sectarianism, stability and protest in the 18th century nation,Scottish elites, the Anglo-Scottish Union, rural social history and comparative Irish and Scottish relationships. The Scottish Nation (1999) became an international bestseller, selling nearly 100,000 copies to date in the UK alone. (and for a brief period even outselling the adventures of Harry Potter in Scotland!)^{[citation needed]} Devine has won all three major prizes for Scottish historical research (Hume Brown, Saltire and Henry Duncan Prize and Lectureship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh), is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the British Academy: the only historian elected to all three national academies in the British Isles.^{[citation needed]} Professor Devine holds the honorary degrees of D.Litt. from Queen's University Belfast and the University of Abertay Dundee and the hon. degree of D.Univ from Strathclyde. He was awarded the first John Aikenhead Medal for services to Scottish education by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland in 2006, and in the same year Bell College (now part of the University of the West of Scotland) conferred on him an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of his contributions to Scottish culture. In 2000 he was awarded the Royal Gold Medal, Scotland's supreme academic accolade, by Queen Elizabeth II, the only historian winner to date, and in 2005 was appointed OBE in the New Years Honours List for 'services to Scottish history'.In 2012 Devine won the Senior Royal Society of Edinburgh/Beltane Prize for Excellence in Public Engagement. One of his recent books, Scotland's Empire 1600-1815 (2003) formed the basis of a six-part BBC2 series in 2005.

Tom Devine was a member of the Research Awards Advisory Committee of the Leverhulme Trust from 2003 to 2009 (adviser on all history fellowship applications) and holds Adjunct Professorships at the East Carolina University and the University of Guelph, Canada.He was Acting Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology from 2008 to 2009 in the University of Edinburgh. Devine has also been a Trustee of the National Museums of Scotland and a Member of Council of the British Academy.

See also

Thomas Martin Devine has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Template:European Association of History Educators- EUROCLIO.

Bibliography

'The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History 1500-2010(2012 jt editor)' 'Scotland and the British Empire(2011,jt editor)' 'To the Ends of the Earth : Scotland's Global Diaspora(2011)' 'Scotland and Poland : Historical Connections'(jt editor 2011)u )

• Scotland and the Union 1707 to 2007 (editor,2008)
• The Scottish Nation 1700 to 2007 (rev ed. 2006)
• Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland 1700-1900 (2006)
• The Transformation of Scotland; The Economy since 1700 (co-author with Clive Lee and George Peden), Edinburgh University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-7486-1433-8
• Scotland's Empire, 1600-1815, Penguin Books, 2003

Being Scottish : Personal Reflections on Scottish Identity Today(co-editor with P Logue,Edinburgh University Press,2002.)

• Scotland's Shame?: Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (Editor), Mainstream Publishing, 2000 ISBN 1-84018-330-6
• The Scottish Nation: 1700-2000, Penguin, 1999 ISBN 0-14-023004-1

Celebrating Columba : Irish-Scottish Connections 597-1997( ed.with JF McMillan,1999)

• People and society in Scotland 1760-1830 (co-editor with R. Mitchison), John Donald, 1998
• Eighteenth-century Scotland (co-editor with J.R. Young), Tuckwell, 1998
• Scotland in the Twentieth Century (co-editor with Richard J. Finlay, Edinburgh University Press, 1996
• Exploring the Scottish Past, 1995

St Mary's Hamilton : a Social History 1646 - 1996 (ed.1995)

• The Transformation of Rural Scotland: social change and the agrarian economy, 1660-1815, 1994

Industry,Business and Society in Scotland since 1700 (ed. with AJG Cummings,1994)

• Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1770-1914, (Editor) 1994
• Scottish Elites 1994

Clanship to Crofters' War (Manchester University Press, 1994)

• Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society (Editor), 1992
• Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, (Editor), 1991.
• Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700-1850 (Editor), 1990

Improvement and Enlightenment(1989)

• The Great Highland Famine, 1988.
• People and Society in Scotland , Volume 1, 1760-1830 (co-editor with R. Mitchison), 1988
• Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland 1770-1914, 1984.

Scotland and Ireland 1600 to 1850 (joint ed. 1983)

• A Scottish firm in Virginia 1767-1777, William Cunninghame and Co., 1982.

• Lairds and Improvement in the Scotland of the Enlightenment, 1978.
• The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities c. 1740-90, 1975.