The Hamish Scott Memorial Studentship

Jesus College, in collaboration with the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford, is delighted to announce a new Doctoral Studentship in early modern European history, named in honour of the late Professor Hamish Scott FBA FRSE, a Senior Research Fellow in History at the College from 2017 until his death in 2022.

The new Hamish Scott Memorial Studentship has been made possible thanks to a generous gift from Professor Scott’s widow, Professor Julia Smith.  

The studentship is for doctoral research on early modern European history (excluding Britain and Ireland) in the period 1500-1750. The award covers a doctorate at the home (UK) fee rate for a qualifying student. The prime consideration for the award will be academic distinction as adjudged by the History Faculty and Jesus College. If there is more than one candidate of equal worthiness, preference may be given to someone working on a topic related to Professor Scott’s main fields of expertise - international history and the history of elites.

Professor Scott was an eminent historian of European international relations between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and prior to joining Jesus was Wardlaw Professor of International History at the University of St Andrews. He published more than sixty essays and articles, and several highly-regarded books on early modern European history. Amongst these were The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648- 1815 (Longman, 1983, co-authored with Derek McKay), British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1990), The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756-1775 (Cambridge, 2001), and The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740-1815 (Harlow, 2006). In recent decades, he had also become a respected authority on European nobilities, and his last book Forming Aristocracy: The Reconfiguration of Europe’s Nobilities 1300-1750 will be published by Oxford University Press later this year.  

Beyond to his own scholarship, Professor Scott was also a highly regarded educator. He started his teaching career at the University of Birmingham in 1970 before joining St Andrews in 1979, and taught both undergraduate and postgraduate students. He retired from St Andrews in 2009, but continued to teach on his election to the Senior Research Fellowship at Jesus College. He is remembered by college members as an outstandingly kind and generous scholar who was loved equally by his students and fellow academics.    

It is through his own upbringing that Professor Scott, and his wife Julia, appreciated the transformational value of financial support to academically-talented young people from economically-challenged backgrounds. He was raised in Edinburgh in a family of very modest means, but received an excellent education thanks to a scholarship to George Heriot’s School – Edinburgh’s oldest independent school. From there, he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, where he was a prize-winning student supported by Government funding. He transferred to the London School of Economics for his PhD, again benefitting from the funding available in those days for exceptional doctoral students.  

Julia says,

Hamish exemplifies what philanthropic and state support for talented students can achieve. Regrettably, equivalent state support for graduate students is no longer available. Jesus College is committed to funding the best talent regardless of financial resources, and so to establish the Hamish Scott Memorial Studentship for a doctoral candidate at Jesus is a fitting tribute to a man who benefited so much from the generosity and support of others.

Dr Alexandra Gajda, John Walsh Fellow in History at Jesus and Associate Professor of History at Oxford, said

Hamish is a deeply-missed colleague, who contributed enormously to the life of the College. In particular, Hamish acted as a mentor to very many graduate students, and was intensely committed to nurturing the next generation of historians. All students who worked with Hamish remarked on his brilliance, kindness, patience, encouragement, and practical support of their work and careers. This extremely generous gift will perpetuate Hamish’s extraordinary legacy, both as one of the leading scholars in the field of early modern History, and as the most generous champion of the work of the best young scholars.

The Hamish Scott Memorial Studentship is not the first studentship created in his name. In June 2023, Jesus College announced the establishment of a spend-down graduate studentship in History named in honour of Professor Scott and the late Dr John Walsh, Emeritus Fellow in History. The John Walsh/Hamish Scott Postgraduate History Studentship (Early Modern History) launched in 2024, and is available to students accepted by the University of Oxford for a History MSt.