<p>This podcast explores the life and influence of the Rev. James Ramsay, an Anglican priest, ship’s surgeon, and pioneering abolitionist who was educated at King’s College between 1749 and 1753. Ramsay’s anti-slavery convictions were born out of the experience of fifteen years as a preacher and medical attendant to the enslaved population of the island of St Christopher (St. Kitts). His abolitionist tracts of 1784-1787 were the most influential publications in the years leading up to abolitionism becoming an organised movement.</p>

The Influence of Professor Herbert J.C. Grierson, 1866-1960

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.