Gender and Justice in the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Highlands: Women in the sheriff court of Inverness, 1748-1800

在18世纪的苏格兰，妇女作为原告、被告和证人出现在法庭上，但与男子相比，我们对她们的待遇和经历知之甚少。该项目将使研究人员更容易获得因弗内斯的治安法庭记录，然后将分析其中包含的女性存在和声音。它将解释法庭程序和假设阻碍和帮助不同地位和角色的妇女，从而改变我们对启蒙运动期间苏格兰高地妇女的社会和法律的态度的理解-这些问题在我们自己的时代仍然是全球性的。该项目将阐明性别历史，法律的历史，高地社会历史和启蒙运动之间的联系，从而改变我们在这一背景下对性别的社会建构的认识，并更广泛地扩展我们对性别的社会建构的理解。长期以来，人们普遍认为十八世纪苏格兰高地妇女要么是浪漫的、异国情调的生物，要么是贫穷、无知的土著，这种观点正在被最近的学术研究所瓦解，因此我们开始恢复对妇女的理解这一时期高地的机构。此外，人们对妇女参与苏格兰启蒙运动以及苏格兰启蒙运动哲学家对妇女在社会中的性质和地位的讨论越来越感兴趣。法律也是启蒙运动哲学家的主要兴趣，高地社会令理论家和旅行者着迷。因此，该项目将以这一时期和其他时期在性别和法律领域为基础，为英国和苏格兰其他地区开展研究工作，并将加深我们对高地妇女的作用和作用以及对高地妇女的社会态度的理解。通过整理和编目因弗内斯郡法院记录，这是由苏格兰国家记录举行，学生将使这些记录更容易访问学术研究人员和公众感兴趣的地方和家族历史的成员，以及获得特殊的培训档案工作的专业标准。

Women appeared in court in eighteenth-century Scotland as complainants, defendants and witnesses, but we know relatively little about their treatment and experience by comparison with men. This project will make the sheriff court records of Inverness substantially more accessible to researchers, and will then analyse the female presence and voices they contain. It will explain what court processes and assumptions hindered and helped women of different statuses and roles, and so transform our understanding of social and legal attitudes to women in the Scottish Highlands during the Enlightenment-questions still globally current in our own time.The project will illuminate the nexus between gender history, legal history, Highland social history and the Enlightenment, and so transform our knowledge of the social construction of gender in this context and expand our understanding of the social construction of gender more broadly. Long-held popular views of Scottish Highland women in the eighteenth century either as romanticised, exotic creatures or as poverty-stricken, ignorant natives, are being dismantled by recent scholarship, and so we are beginning to recover an understanding of women's agency in the Highlands in this period. Further, there has been increasing interest in both the participation of women in the Scottish Enlightenment and of the discussion by Scottish Enlightenment philosophers of the nature and place of women in society. The law was also a major interest of Enlightenment philosophers, and Highland society fascinated both theorists and travellers. This project will therefore build on the work of scholarship in the field of gender and law in this period and others, for other regions of Britain and Scotland, and it will deepen our understanding of the roles and agency of Highland women, and of social attitudes to women in the Highlands. By sorting and cataloguing the Inverness sheriff court records, which are held by the National Records of Scotland, the student will make these records much more easily accessible to academic researchers and members of the public interested in local and family history, as well as gaining exceptional training in archival work to professional standards.