We held the following events across 2021, with summaries and recordings posted to the project blog shortly afterward.
- Event 1: Back Issues: Research Roundtable on Post-60s Scottish Periodicals
Online – 24 February 2021
A dazzling tour d’horizon of the magazine in theory by our guest speaker, Professor Patrick Collier (Ball State University), and some initial questions and reflections on our Scottish titles and contexts.
- Event 2: Mind that Magazine? Public Launch and Discussion
Online – 12 May 2021, 8-10pm
Our second event brought together magazine editors, readers and researchers, to share their stories and reflections. Our guest speakers were Peter Kravitz, editor of Edinburgh Review and director of Polygon, and Glenda Norquay, Professor of Scottish Literary Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, who was a member of the Cencrastus editorial team in the early 1980s.
- Event 3: Future Issues: Digitising Twentieth-Century Magazines
Online – 24 June 2021, 2-4pm
Speakers: Dr Polly Russell (British Library), Prof Lorna M. Hughes (University of Glasgow), Fredric Saunderson (Rights and Information Manager, National Library of Scotland)
This workshop explored key principles, opportunities, risks and legal developments in magazine digitisation.
- Event 4: Current Issues: Scottish Independent Media Then and Now
Online – Weds 6 October 2021, 2-4pm
What can today’s Scottish media learn from the magazine culture of the 1970s-90s? And how should we interpret various shifts in the Scottish public sphere since that period?
This event brought together three speakers from Scotland’s independent media, with direct experience of its evolution over the past few decades:
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- Mike Small – writer, researcher and editor (Bella Caledonia, Red Herring/Product, Indymedia Scotland)
- Lesley Riddoch – journalist and broadcaster (Harpies & Quines, BBC Scotland, National)
- Jamie Maxwell – journalist and editor (Politico, Foreign Policy, New Left Review)
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Each of our guests has close ties to Scottish magazine culture, whether as editors of 1990s print titles (Red Herring/Product and Harpies & Quines) or as scholars of the 1970s-80s scene which included Question Magazine and Radical Scotland. As working journalists and sometime activists, they have observed at close quarters the transformation of the Scottish public sphere since devolution, and are well placed to reflect on the political, technological and economic contexts of these changes.
This online event was open to the public, and a recording can be viewed here.
- Event 5: New Directions and Capacity Building
Edinburgh – January 2022
Our final workshop will review the network’s initial activity and themes, asking researchers and students to identify emergent questions (and answers) as we move toward publishing our findings. Building on our discussions at Event 3, the afternoon session will comprise a scoping meeting focused on prospects for magazine digitisation. There is no summary blogpost for this research meeting, but the fruits of our discussions will appear in the forthcoming edited volume.