King’s College has a prehistory. Dr Jackson Armstrong (Senior Lecturer in History, University of Aberdeen) sheds new light on the founding of King’s College as a kingdom-building endeavour that underscored Scottish engagement with the age of the renaissance. This involved the tenure of Archdeacon John Barbour at the medieval cathedral of St Machar’s by the Don, who in the 1380s composed The Brus—an epic poem that is considered to be the foundational work of Scots literature—and in the chantry chaplains of St Nicholas in the adjacent royal burgh on the Dee.
Transcript for this episode: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/resources/index.php#panel1550

The Local Rise and International Role of Marischal College, 1593-1860

From its ancient origins in the 1495 founding of King’s College through to thriving global endeavours in 2020, the University of Aberdeen boasts a historic legacy spanning 525 years of leading and engaging with intellectual currents of the wider world. Yet quatercentenary and quincentennial memorial histories of the University of Aberdeen portray the institution from a regional and national perspective. The Aberdeen University librarian between 1894 and 1926, Peter John Anderson (1853-1926), edited the quatercentenary commemoration volume, Studies in the History of the University published by the New Spalding Club in 1906. Serving as the secretary of the New Spalding Club, Anderson sought to promote the Club’s interests in the North-East of Scotland by shedding new light on the history of the University. In celebration of the quinquennial anniversary, another brief illustrated history of the University by Jennifer Carter and Colin McLaren—Crown and Gown—published by Aberdeen University Press in 1994 succinctly surveys University achievements as historically significant in Scottish contexts. This podcast series, drawn from a forthcoming edited volume to be published by Aberdeen University Press, presents a new history of the University of Aberdeen, one that accounts for the University’s activities in the transnational and global transmission of ideas since its foundation.