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From his earliest days as an undergraduate, Sir Tom Devine has been fascinated by the paradoxes and puzzles that emerge from studying the past, and by the realities often hidden beneath historical myths. For more than fifty years he has specialised in the history of the Scottish people at home and abroad, a field rich in contradictions, particularly in the modern era from the late seventeenth century onwards. Remarkably, serious scholarly attention to modern Scottish history only gained momentum from the 1970s.

This lecture will explore one of its greatest enigmas: Why did Scotland's remarkable economic success coincide with exceptionally high levels of emigration? Which traditional explanations are necessary, but insufficient, to explain this paradox? What new evidence points toward a more convincing explanation of Scotland's global exodus? Does this interpretation finally resolve what has come to be known as "The Devine Paradox"?

The Victorians peered first with candles and ended the century bathed in gaslight and then electrical light; they rode horses and shipped by canal before travelling at ‘lightning speed’ by locomotive, motorcycle and motorcar. Wood and sail, later iron and steam, transported their industry and their tourists. For those who turned down the opportunity of emigration, men and women, boys and girls, led this transformation: more Scots were in paid employment than ever before, and the rich were getting richer. But still ordinary Scots struggled: their housing was poor, they felt the cold and the damp, they lost infants, brothers and sisters to illness and death. The Scots consumed plentiful amounts of alcohol and sought God’s grace to find solace and reason. And yet the economy and the nation’s wealth were on the rise.

These opportunities, and these challenges, also faced Scotland’s immigrant populations: from Ireland, Italy, Russia and other places besides, including also from England and Wales. With a focus on the jute industry in Dundee, Grame Morton will examine Scotland’s industrial history, and the social consequences of overcrowded urban living, through the lens of the nation’s immigrant communities.

Music has played a vital role throughout Scottish history in the lives of migrants and those who remained at home, illustrating how sound has kept connections alive across time and space. As a living cultural memory of place and origins, music sits at the heart of many of the most emotive stories of Scottish movement over the centuries.

In this talk, Frances Wilkins will explore the roles of spiritual traditions—including Gaelic psalm and hymn singing—alongside emigration songs and instrumental music for dancing and listening in dispersed Scottish communities. Accompanied by recorded audio illustrations, she will demonstrate  how music served as both an anchor to the past and a bridge to new surroundings.

If your ancestors lived in or migrated through one of Scotland’s many cities or towns, it may seem an impossible task to pinpoint their movements. However, there are many rich sources which you can mine to uncover the (sometimes unexpected) details of their urban lives. These include city directories, electoral registers, and tax records, as well as many less obvious sources. In this talk, Alison Spring will present case studies to demonstrate the way many of these records can be used together to trace the progress of your urban ancestors, including those in the twentieth century.

This session is designed to help participants follow the journeys of their ancestors from Scotland to Canada, and provide ideas of where to start research on the Scottish side of the Atlantic. Starting by looking at passenger lists, Morag Peers will explore what records are available, and where to find people on records which have survived. She will discuss why pinpointing a location from where they may have emigrated is not always straightforward, and present tips, techniques and useful websites. 

Religion and migration have both had a profound influence in the shaping of Scottish identity. At times they have also had overlapping influence on each other. Marjory Harper will explore the causes and consequences of that interaction, both within Scotland and in the diaspora, particularly in Canada. She will begin by discussing the close relationship between religion and national identity in post-Reformation Scotland; and then evaluate the attitudes of denominations and individual clergy to migration and emigration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before focusing on the impact of the 1843 Disruption on population movement. 

That event was not simply another schism within Scottish Presbyterianism: the biggest secession ever to take place from the Established Church in Scotland undermined the concept of a single national identity at all levels – theological, political, social, economic and cultural, as well as personal – splitting communities and families in its wake. Marjory will scrutinize why the Disruption triggered migration and emigration from the Lowlands and Highlands respectively and look at the consequences of population movement within Scotland and across the diaspora. Alongside documentary evidence, it will consider how the Disruption specifically, and Scottish religious identity more generally, have been portrayed in fiction in Scotland and Canada.

Scottish ancestors did not simply leave home - they moved within Scotland first, often through a chain of farms, villages, towns, and estates before emigrating overseas. Chris Fleet will explore how online maps can help family historians trace those movements and better understand the places from where came those who emigrated from Scotland.

The first part will introduce some of the most useful maps for family history research, including estate maps, town plans, county maps, and Ordnance Survey mapping. Chris will show how these sources can illuminate internal migration in Scotland and the wider patterns that fed emigration. He will discuss who made these maps, why they were created, and what that means for the information they contain—and the gaps that can occur.

The second part will focus on the National Library of Scotland’s maps website, with a practical tour of features especially useful to genealogists. After a quick refresher on searching and using georeferenced maps, Chris will move on to newer tools for drawing, annotating, importing and exporting data; downloading images for reuse; and manually georeferencing maps with Allmaps. The aim is to give family historians the confidence to use these resources effectively in tracing Scottish ancestors.

Graeme Morton, Marjory Harper, Morag Peers and Frances Wilkins will take part in the Expert Connect Q and A session, where conference participants can engage with them in four breakout rooms to discuss the themes of Forces That Moved Our Ancestors and Historical Records that track their movements. Guest experts will join them to provide broad coverage of the topics, and answer your burning questions.

Genealogists use an array of technologies in the research process, but how do these technologies affect our relationship with information? And how does that relationship impact the field of genealogy, the information ecosystem, and the world? We are witnessing the rise of misinformation, technofascism, global inequality, and the rapidly accelerating climate crisis. As custodians of history, genealogists are in a unique position to push back against the pollution of the information ecosystem and the planet. 

In this presentation Laura House will discuss the current technological landscape, the incentive structures driving investment in extractivist and exploitative industries, and the impact of those industries on the field of genealogy. She will highlight some of the extraordinary organisations taking a human-centred, ethical, and inclusive approach to technology development and the preservation of history.

This conference has shown  the myriad ways our ancestors shaped their world. We end with the reminder that the most powerful force shaping the future for our descendants is us.