On March 22nd, 2025, Professor Marjory Harper (University of Aberdeen) joined us for an enlightening lecture and workshop on the significance of letters written by and to a wide range of Scottish emigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Her lecture focused mainly on those emigrants who went to Canada, but also alluded to examples from other locations, using the writers’ own words to explore their motives, experiences and legacies. It demonstrated that emigrant correspondence had multiple objectives: imparting information; issuing instructions; offering encouragement, practical and pecuniary assistance; conveying cautionary advice; and articulating nostalgia or homesickness. Since letters be aspirational or disingenuous, and could conceal as much as they revealed, they sometimes have to be read against the grain in order to understand their complexity.

During the workshop, attendees were encouraged to share old letters they had received from family in Scotland. Participants were shown how to read the letters between the lines, and ask, "What do they say not only about personal relationships, but also about the relationship between Scotland and its diasporic population?" Then, we had a fascinating chat about how correspondence from the past connects us to the present.

Watch the video of Professor Harper's lecture.