This seminar shares recent research on the University of Edinburgh’s campaign to finance the construction of new infrastructure for its Medical School – the building known today as the Old Medical School on Teviot Place – in the 1870s and 1880s.
Drawing on underexamined materials in the University’s archives, Dr Simon Buck (Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities) and Siân Davies (PhD candidate, School of History, Classics and Archaeology) will discuss the University’s receipt of slavery- and empire-linked funds during the late Victorian period, and ask what records of philanthropy might reveal about the institution's imperial and global networks.
This research emerges from the Decolonised Transformations Project, commissioned by Principal Peter Mathieson to look into the University’s historical links to slavery, colonialism and the production of racial science, and has been kindly supported by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and the Centre for Research Collections.
Following the talk will be a Q&A and drinks reception. The event will be hybrid: a link to join via Zoom will be sent to registered Eventbrite attendees.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/who-paid-for-the-old-medical-school-building-tickets-945550295387?aff=oddtdtcreator
Image: The University New Buildings (School of Medicine), Medical School, c. 1900, EUA CA1/2, University of Edinburgh Heritage Collections)