ABOUT THE PROJECT

Following the tremendous success of the Touchwood History project launched in 2007, a full-scale Scotland-wide forestry oral history based project led by the UHI Centre for History started in April 2009.

This ambitious 3½ year project – a social history of Scottish forestry in the 20th century – will culminate in the publication of an authoritative account and analysis of the forestry sector’s impact on Scottish rural society during the last 100 years. This book will draw on the recorded memories of people who worked in forestry – private, state and allied sectors – and whose lives were affected by it.   These interviews will be gathered by a team of experienced oral historians and placed in the Highland Council archive in Inverness. Such testimony will be reinforced by research in documentary archives and in published sources. 

 
The project – funded by the Forestry Commission (GB and Scotland), the European Union and the Scottish Forestry Trust – will be undertaken by the UHI Centre for History team put together in connection with Touchwood History. The team’s work will be overseen by Prof. Jim Hunter – with further guidance provided by Dr. Fiona Watson, a leading woodland historian and a Centre for History research associate. Overall responsibility for the project lies with Prof Hunter, himself with strong family links with forestry and day-to-day co-ordination will be undertaken by Mairi Stewart . She is again joined by Touchwood History principal oral historian, Dr Hugo Manson and newcomer to the team, Jill de fresnes, an experienced oral historian whose research has recently focused on women of the herring fisheries industry. Gordon Urquhart, whom many will know from his work on the Forestry Memories website, continues as website co-ordinator . Thanks must also go to our volunteers,  Norman Davidson first amongst them, for all his hard work on the image library.
 
   

 

Page Last Updated - 17/12/2009
Contact gordon@forestry-memories.org.uk