Imagining Scotland: Nationalism, Narratives and New Scots
With the announcement of IndyRef2, this event asks: what kind of Scotlands can we imagine? Who gets to write Scotland’s future?
Join a panel of playwrights, journalists and researchers from around the UK and Ireland to explore a host of radical ideas, controversial proposals and comedic satires on the twin themes of nation and identity. We’ll dig under the skin of nationalist movements, seeking to understand their emotional and psychological roots, and think together about how we build new communities in a connected digital world.
The debate around Scotland’s independence is often presented as a simple binary: Yes vs. No, Nationalism vs. Unionism. This event digs deeper, presenting stories from the past, present and future that lay out diverse visions of what a nation can be and how a people or peoples can be formed. We will bring together a diverse group of experts in nationalism and identity for an in-person discussion accessible to the general public (15+). Speakers include:
- Prof. Lesley McAra, Director of IASH at the University of Edinburgh;
- Mr Oisín Kearney, playwright;
- Dr Rory Scothorne, IASH Fellow in social and political thought;
- Dr Annie Webster, IASH Fellow in refugee studies.
This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2022. Free tickets available at https://imaginingscotland.eventbrite.co.uk
Image credit: Julien Leuthold (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu), licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.