Katie Barclay

The aims of this project are to produce the first history of the Scottish family and a new methodology for how to study social behaviour while taking account of the family. It addresses the significant question of how variation is produced in social groups, with its implications for important issues such as social mobility.  The intended outcome of this project is a major intervention in the history of the family that explains how child-rearing practices, family identity and myth-making shape the personalities of its members and so the impact of the family on the world. It uses a cutting history of emotions methodology, an interdisciplinary approach that draws on perspectives from educational development and psychology, gender studies, history, literature, philosophy and cognitive science. Its key benefit will be to offer "the family" as a lens through which scholars from a range of disciplines and policymakers can interpret social, economic and political action and so improve interventions in family life aimed at reducing social inequity.