Outland and Scotland sampler

Dr Lisa W Kelly is Senior Lecturer in Film & Television Studies at the University of
Glasgow. Her research examines working conditions in the screen industries, with a
specific focus on safety and wellbeing, and she has previously published on TV sitcom,
UK film policy and screen talent development.
Gillebrìde MacMillan is a Senior Lecturer in Celtic and Gaelic in the School of
Humanities/Sgoil nan Daonnachdan at the University of Glasgow, where he teaches
Gaelic grammar, language, literature, translation and song classes for undergraduate
and postgraduate levels. Gillebrìde was Gwyllyn the Bard in Season 1 of Outlander and
has been a Gaelic advisor on the series. He also gives his name to a character in the ninth
novel in the series, Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone. He is also a singer and his albums
include Freumhan Falaichte (Hidden Roots) 2018 and Sèimh: The State of Calm (2023).
Willy Maley is a retired professor and affiliate in the School of Critical Studies at the
University of Glasgow. Previous edited collections on Irish and Scottish culture include
Shakespeare and Scotland (2004), Celtic Connections: Irish–Scottish Relations and the
Politics of Culture (2013), Romantic Ireland: From Tone to Gonne; Fresh Perspectives
on Nineteenth-Century Ireland (2013), Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderers
(2014), Scotland and the Easter Rising: Fresh Perspectives on 1916 (2016) and Our
Fathers Fought Franco (2023).

Outlander and Scotland
Touchstones and Signposts
Edited by
LISA W KELLY, GILLEBRÌDE MACMILLAN and WILLY MALEY

Given Outlander’s transatlantic nature, the publisher has chosen to retain the original author’s
or source material’s spelling conventions (eg, ​American English), rather than converting them
to another standard (eg, British English).
First published 2025
isbn 978-1-80425-204-8
The authors’ right to be identified as author of this book
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
This book is made of materials from well-managed,
FSC®-certified forests and other controlled sources.
Printed and bound by
Ashford Colour Ltd, Gosport
Typeset in 11.5 point Sabon by
Main Point Books, Edinburgh
© the contributors 2025

This book is dedicated to Professor Sir Geoff Palmer 1940–2025
Sir Geoff graced the Glasgow Outlander conference with a
wonderful plenary lecture entitled ‘Hands That Took…’,
an allusion to a line from Robert Burns’s anti-slavery poem,
‘Ode, sacred to the memory of Mrs Oswald of Auchencruive’.
Sir Geoff spoke eloquently without notes for an hour
and answered questions with great wisdom and patience.
Unfortunately, when we came to publish these essays,
Sir Geoff was too unwell to provide a transcript for his improvised
presentation. The conference proceedings were not recorded,
but the editors wish to record their thanks here in memory of a
marvellous contribution, sadly missing from this collection.

Contents
Introduction
An Outlandish Idea
Lisa W Kelly, Gillebrìde MacMillan and Willy Maley 11
Foreword
My Father’s Sombrero: Cultural Appropriation
and What’s So Appropriate About Culture?
Diana Gabaldon 13
PART ONE: Colonialism . Slavery . Indigenous Communities
An Actor’s Brush with Slavery
Bill Paterson 18
Outlander and the Wild West of Scotland
Willy Maley
Bloodlines: Scottish and Native American Interactions, Historical
Documents, Photographs and Stories
Sharenda Roam 29
Religion, Feminism and the Colonial Past
Sheila Briggs 35
PART TWO: Jacobitism . Gaelic . Poetry
Chasing the Jacobite Dream
Jesper Ericsson 42
‘What Makes Heroic Strife?’: Practical Jacobitism and its
Death at Culloden
Darren Scott Layne 49
From Covenant to Culloden: Paisley’s Jacobite Story
Archie Henderson 57
The Prince and the Oral Tradition
Gillebrìde MacMillan 62
2o
7

‘Beyond the Stones’: A Poet Looks at Identity
Jock Stein 66
‘She’s even misspelled “help”!’: Outlander’s Fraser Men
and Gaelic Education in the Scottish Highlands
Danielle Fatzinger 69
‘Da mi basia mille’: Ancient Love Poetry and
Modern Romance Literature in Outlander
Olivia Happel-Block 73
PART THREE: Gender . Feminism . Resilience
Putting Sexual Violence ‘Back into History’: Outlander, Rape
and the #MeToo Movement
Katherine Byrne and Julie Anne Taddeo 84
‘I’m Not the Meek and Obedient Type’: Feminist Characterisation,
Anti-Ageism and Sexual Agency in Outlander
Yvette de la Vega 91
Claire: The ‘Bad’ Historian?
Rosanne S Parent 97
Outlandish Femininities: Interrogating Feminism, Femme Theory,
and Settler Fantasies in Outlander Fandom
Andi Schwartz 103
A Story of Systemic Resilience
Christie Eppler and Rebecca A Cobb 109
Outlander as a Therapeutic Tool for Couples:
Thoughts of a Psychologist Turned Memoirist
Robyn Irving 115
PART FOUR: Medicine . Ethics . Environment
The Proximity of the Patient and the Role of Sympathy in Outlander
Jane A Hartsock 122
Healing the Sick to Delivering Foals: One Health,
Comparative Medicine and Outlander
Jamie Rothenburger 127
8

Reading and watching Outlander Through an Environmental
and Eco-critical Lens
Cornelia Kaufmann 132
PART FIVE: Texuality . Materiality
Tartan Through the Stones: Scottish Dress and the Costuming
of Outlander
Brenna A Barks 138
‘A Weapon Into My Hands’: Textuality in the Outlander Series
Svetlana Seibel 143
Translating Outlander: Titles and Covers in the German Editions
Alexandra Dold 149
PART SIX: The ‘Outlander Effect’ . Industry . Tourism
A Series of Cycles: Watching Outlander and Visiting Scotland
Teresa Dokey 156
The ‘Outlander Effect’ on the Scottish-based Freelance
Screen Workforce
Nelson Correia 163
The Outlander Training Programme: Accounts from
Below-the-Line Workers in Scotland’s Screen Sector
Lisa W Kelly and Katherine Champion
17o
The Outlander Effect 2.0: A Case Study
Verena Bernardi 177
The ‘Outlander Effect’ on Scottish Tourism to its Remote Regions
Katherine Chalmers 183
Integrating Film Tourism into Heritage Management:
The Case of Outlander and its Impact on Scottish Heritage Sites
Alexandra Dold, Séverine Peyrichou and Juliette Irretier 190
Outlander: an Ambassador of Scotland
Ioannis Gigis with Max Chambers 197
9

Screen Tourism at the World Tourism Organisation:
The Outlander Perspective for Sustainable Tourism
Laura Huici-Sancho 203
Outlandish Whisky Experience – a Sensory Ethnography Approach
to Alcohol in Outlander Novels, Television Series and Tourism
Riitta-Marja Leinonen 208
Outlander: Comfort and Escapism
Jordan Rich 213
The Past is a Destination: Outlander and Screen Tourism
at Historical Heritage Sites 219
Charlene Herselman
PART SEVEN: Temporality . Memory
Travelling Back in Time: Readers’ and Audiences’ Experiences of
Journeying into the Past with Claire in Outlander
Lorna Stevens 226
Narratives of Witchcraft: Geillis Duncan, Outlander,
and the Politics of Memory
Stephanie Shakay Tierney 234
The Shifting Paradigm of the Fantastic Marvelous: Time Travel
and Genre Hybridity in the Outlander Serial Television Drama
Michael A Unger 240
And Finally…
Ten Outlander Questions Answered
Diana Gabaldon in conversation with Willy Maley 245
Acknowledgements 257
References 258
Endnotes 275
Notes on Contributors 290
10

Introduction
An Outlandish Idea
Lisa W Kelly, Gillebrìde MacMillan and Willy Maley
The novels of Diana Gabaldon have enthralled millions of readers for over
three decades and today hundreds of gatherings and interest groups around the
world promote and encourage Outlander fandom. Outlander and Scotland:
Touchstones and Signposts arises out of the first major international conference
on Outlander. This remarkable gathering in July 2023 was hosted by the
University of Glasgow, which provided locations for Outlander, including its
famous cloisters, where Claire and Brianna walked when Glasgow stood in for
Harvard, and it was outside the City Chambers, standing in for Westminster,
that Frank Randall proposed to Claire Beauchamp. The star guest was Diana
Gabaldon herself. From the word go, she was a generous, engaging and
enthusiastic supporter of the project.This gathering blurred the boundary
between academia and fandom: orthopaedic surgeons, veterinary scientists,
film critics, anthropologists, translators, linguists, historians, medical ethics
experts, agriculturalists, political scientists, philosophers and fans came
together to discuss the Outlander phenomenon and the multiple areas of
expertise involved in its creation. Outlander’s themes – healing, medicine,
war, cultural encounters, witchcraft and emigration – have captured the
imagination of millions of readers and viewers. Diana gives scrupulous
attention to the minutiae of everyday life in the period – or periods – in which
the novels are set. ‘Some people regard facts as inconvenient obstacles to their
creativity, while I’m inclined to view them as a trampoline,’ she comments in
‘Ten Outlander Questions Answered’. Her gift for detail is legendary.
The series, launched in book form in 1991 and adapted for TV in 2014,
has been transformative for Scotland’s tourism and heritage, generating
global interest in the country’s history, languages and landscapes. It maps
out the contribution of Scotland to American Independence – and more
problematically, to the Atlantic slave trade – and has drawn attention to
early Scottish interaction with Indigenous peoples in North America.
11

Outlander and scotland: Touchstones and Signposts
Richly researched, the books open up questions about 18th-century Scotland
and pivotal events like Culloden to a world readership, at a time when new
scholarship suggests that some of this history has still to be written or is in
need of revision. A notable feature of these novels is their frank treatment of
female sexuality and sexual relations on the whole, including sexual violence.
Vivid and visceral, Outlander takes a time-travelling nurse-turned-doctor and
propels her from 1946 to 1743, two worlds of war that collide in an elaborate
and painstaking reconstruction. The series is an innovative and pioneering
rethinking of how we excavate and examine the narratives of the past.
Shot primarily in Scotland, Outlander has been a brilliant boost for the
Scottish screen industry and has led to the development of a dedicated
studio space and numerous employment opportunities, including a training
programme specifically for new entrants, providing an excellent pathway
for film and TV students. The main focus of the TV series is not just the rural
Scotland of tourist brochures with castles, islands, lochs and mountains; its
towns and cities also play a part, and none more notably than Glasgow. A
focal point for Outlander and the themes it develops, Glasgow Cathedral,
St Andrew’s in the Square and George Square have all been used as locations
for key scenes, while West End streets and Kelvingrove Park stand in for
Boston. Colleagues at Glasgow University from a range of disciplines have
been directly involved in the TV production as researchers, advisors and even
cast members – Gillebrìde MacMillan (Senior Lecturer in Gaelic) stars as
Gwyllyn the Bard in Season 1 of the TV series. Gillebrìde, who has acted as
a Gaelic advisor on the series, also gives his name to a character in the ninth
novel, Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone (2021). Outlander has stimulated
considerable interest in the Gaelic language, bringing a wave of new learners.
History has tended to be written from a male perspective, even domestic
history, where the main actors are not women. Outlander is different.
Women have agency and the central protagonist is an active, engaged,
informed, literally world-changing figure. Towards the end of Go Tell The
Bees That I Am Gone, Claire reflects that ‘written history has only a tenuous
connection with the actual facts of what happened. Let alone the thoughts,
actions and reactions of the people involved.’
A distinctive feature of Outlander is the representation of Indigenous
communities (including the Gaelic community) and the wider relationship
between natives and newcomers. Questions of ethical depiction, accurate
representation and an inclusive approach to different cultures are key both
to the novels and the TV series. What can film and fiction tell us about history
that scholarship can’t? Popular culture, rather than distracting us from ‘real
history’, encourages greater understanding of history in its broadest sense.
12

FOREWORD
My Father’s Sombrero:
Cultural Appropriation and What’s so Appropriate
About Culture?
Diana Gabaldon
My father had an embroidered sombrero. He never wore it; it floated
around the house, appearing here and there among the objets d’… well,
‘d’artes’ isn’t quite the right word. Leave it that all of the people on both sides
of my family were money-limited in previous generations (both my parents
were born in 1930) and therefore were either Very Thrifty and never threw
away anything that might conceivably be used, and/or Total Squirrels, who
never threw anything away, no matter what it was.
My Dad’s family members (Hispanic) were of the Thrifty class, while my
mother’s (English and German) were plainly Squirrels, back to the Flood.
This is why we had six (new) basketballs, four ten-gallon cast-iron souppots,
an antique bottle-capper (we didn’t know what it was, for some time,
until a friend who was an amateur brewer recognized it), a child’s china
(literally) tea-set, made in (literally) China (circa 1950), hand-painted with
versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, a stereopticon viewer with complete
sets of ‘Views of Croydon’ and ‘Views of the Grand Canyon’, a tattered
deer hide, dyed blue (I honestly have No Idea; maybe one of my father’s
friends, for whom he butchered deer and elk they’d shot, gave it to him;
he was a professional cook, among many other things – the soup-pots and
basketballs were emblems of his identity), several green army sleeping bags
(my maternal grandfather served in WWI), all the Beatles albums from The
Beatles! to Rubber Soul (I didn’t care for the music after that – too affected,
smarmy and neither heart nor soul, sorry, Guys), and a lot more Stuff, all
communing in the menacing/intriguing, shadowy, dirt-floored Space Under
the House, which took my sister and me three days – working like fiends – to
clear out, when my stepmother sold the place 50-some years later.
13

Part one
Colonialism . Slavery . Indigenous Communities

An Actor’s Brush with Slavery
Bill Paterson
Bill Paterson plays Ned Gowan, Edinburgh lawyer to Clan MacKenzie, in
Outlander Seasons 1–3. Here (first published in Scottish Review) he reflects on
one of the key themes of Outlander, Scotland’s involvement in the slave trade.
During lockdown in London in 2020, current obsessions and a significant
birthday brought some memories bubbling to the surface. Fifty years earlier,
in 1970, the Glasgow Citizens Theatre for Youth devised and performed a
play for young people called, very succinctly, The Slave Trade. It was one of
my first proper paying jobs and from our base at that wondrous theatre in the
Gorbals, we toured school halls from Paisley to Cumbernauld and all points in
between. Three performances a day to audiences of 11-year-olds. For its time,
and for its audience, it was a stark and unsentimental look at the brutalities
of the triangular slave trade between Britain, west Africa and the Caribbean
and the sufferings it inflicted on millions of Black men and women. Also, for
its time, it won’t surprise you to know that we attempted to do this without
having a single Black face in our cast of five actors. In our show, the British
apex of the triangle was represented by the city of Bristol. That city bore the
full brunt of our outrage at the immoral yet lucrative trade that helped build
its prosperity. Bristol and, almost by implication, England, was the villain.
Eighteenth-century Scotland, and particularly Glasgow and Edinburgh, were
innocent bystanders. Never mentioned.
Although we daily passed down streets with names like Jamaica, Virginia,
Tobago, Glassford and Buchanan, it never crossed our minds to research
and portray the stories behind these names and their hidden connection to
human trafficking and suffering. We had cheerfully accepted the myth that
Glasgow’s 18th-century wealth and expansion had been brought to us by a
group of merchants known, almost affectionately, as The Tobacco Lords.
These respected and powerful worthies had imported tobacco and sugar from
the Caribbean and the American colonies and selflessly laid the foundations
for the city’s commercial growth in later years. In our naivety we must have
assumed that they simply sent off a postal order for a consignment of Golden
Virginia and two or three months later the unsullied goods were delivered
18

An Actor’s brush with slavery
to a warehouse in Port Glasgow or on the Broomielaw. Like today’s online
deliveries, we didn’t think much about those trapped amidst the nuts and
bolts of that commerce. We certainly didn’t think of their ‘lordships’ possible
involvement in the cruel slave labour necessary to actually plant and harvest
those commodities. After all, wasn’t that dirty business organised from Bristol?
Despite our best intentions, our little show was complicit in quietly separating
Scotland from the reality of the century’s slave trade. In this benighted year of
2020, those 11-year-olds in our audiences will now be approaching pension
age and many, like me, will have never questioned that assumption until recent
years. Some of them might even be the proud owners of a wee pied-à-terre
in the Merchant City, that concocted rebranding ploy for the grid of streets
named after many of those tobacco dealers. When Glasgow welcomed that
brand image as recently as the 1980s it showed how ignorant we remained of
the underbelly of the city’s commerce. This was the Glasgow that was miles
better but was still out and proud about its Tobacco Lords. True the new name
successfully rescued the area from neglect but from the start it never felt right.
These days something more gruesomely accurate might be demanded. We can
no longer be quite so innocent of what was done to lay the foundations of the
Merchant City. Perhaps best to reinstate its lovely old name of Candleriggs
because, as every news bulletin tells us, names have become important again.
Many years later, I had another tiny brush with Scotland’s involvement in the
slave trade in the film Amazing Grace about the life and struggles of William
Wilberforce. I played Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, often known as
the ‘uncrowned king of Scotland’, during the time of Pitt the Younger. Dundas
paid lip service to the abolition of slavery, but his protection of vested interests
actively delayed Pitt and Wilberforce’s anti-slavery legislation. In one crucial
scene Dundas persuaded the House of Commons to hold fire on the Abolition
Act and only introduce it ‘gradually’. His broad Scots brogue would have
made that word ring round the chamber and it kept millions enslaved for a
further 15 years. His statue towers over St Andrew Square Garden and we
could all name several Dundas and Melville streets in towns and cities all over
Scotland. Not to mention a long-demolished bus station. Although there are
calls for his removal from that column, at 150-feet above the gardens it might
as well be Oor Wullie up there. Better, I think, to inform readers at ground level
of Henry Dundas’s real impact on our history. The urge to rebrand every single
street name with a dodgy pedigree could be a never-ending and constantly
shapeshifting task. I’m hoping that someone is developing an app that can
put these names into context. At a click we need never ask again, ‘Who was
Glassford? Who was Buchanan? Who was Dundas?’ and be told ‘Oh, they
were just some old Scottish worthies. They meant no harm.’
19

Part two
Jacobitism . Gaelic . Poetry

Chasing the Jacobite Dream
Jesper Ericsson
In support of the Glasgow International Outlander Conference in July
2023, the Hunterian Museum showcased ‘Chasing the Jacobite Dream’,
a special exhibition exploring how medals were used as powerful objects
in a long propaganda war. For almost a century after 1688, the British
Crown used issues to assert royal authority and humiliate its enemies. For
Jacobites, medals were emotive symbols of loyalty and dynamic reminders to
the faithful to chase the dream of a Stuart restoration. ‘Chasing the Jacobite
Dream’ chose a themed, chronological approach over seven display cases,
summarised below.
The First Jacobite
James II (of England and Ireland) and VII (of Scotland) ascended the throne in
1685 on the death of his elder brother, Charles II. Although his Catholicism
was initially tolerated, James’ choice of faith, a raft of controversial decisions
and ultimately the birth of a son and heir eventually proved his undoing.
In 1688, a group of English nobles contacted William, Prince of Orange, to
ask for Protestant Dutch aid in preventing a Catholic succession. William
obliged, landing an army at Torbay and marching on London. James and
his family fled to France.
James II escapes to France,
1689, GLAHM:38351.
The reverse of this Dutch
medal suggests that the
events of late 1688 unfolded
due to divine intervention.
Lightning streaks from
clouds inscribed with
‘Jehovah’ in Hebrew, splitting
the column of Stuart rule.
42

Part Three
Gender . Feminism . Resilience

Outlandish Femininities:
Interrogating Feminism, Femme Theory
and Settler Fantasies in Outlander Fandom
Andi Schwartz
First marketed in the feminised genre of romance novels, Outlander’s
fandom has been driven by women. Beyond the allure of the romance, much
of the fandom and discourse surrounding Outlander has been a celebration
of its strong female lead, Claire; the TV show has even been heralded as the
feminist Game of Thrones. In this paper, I argue that a critical femininity
studies framework, rather than a feminist framework, may lead to more
nuanced explorations of what female fans are fantasising about when we
escape into the Outlander universe.
In a 2015 Business Insider article, Outlander’s fandom was described as
consisting of mostly women – and specifically, soccer moms – who are drawn
to the series by the characters’ family values, Claire and Jamie’s inspiring
marriage, the strong female lead and the good looks of leading man, Sam
Heughan. Eleanor Ty contests this explanation as perfunctory and offers a
more in-depth analysis of the appeal of Outlander, listing five key reasons for
its popularity. The first is Outlander’s ‘Strong, Competent Heroine’, Claire,
who, Ty says, evokes an affective response from both her fictional love
interest and us, her fans. This is reflected in Ty’s language in the chapter: she
says that the audience first ‘falls in love’ with Claire when she heals Jamie’s
dislocated shoulder on their first encounter, and that showrunner Ronald D.
Moore understands our ‘attraction’ to competent heroines and as a result,
gives us Claire and Jenny Fraser, both feisty, strong and capable women. In
Ty’s estimation, female fans have an affective response and attachment to
Claire, which she explains as aspirational:
Claire’s ability to use everyday, domestic objects, utensils, and kitchen
herbs to heal is part of the magical technique Gabaldon uses to make
her powers believable. We admire her, yet the detailed catalog of her
tools make it seem as if these are skills we too could have. 1
103

Part Four
Medicine . Ethics . Environment

The Proximity of the Patient and the Role of
Sympathy in Outlander
Jane A Hartsock
Introduction
Primum Non Nocere. First do no harm. The Hippocratic Oath is so
ubiquitous, it has become nearly synonymous with the practice of medicine
itself. Stop an ordinary person on the street and ask them what the primary
obligation of a physician is to their patient, and you are likely to hear this
maxim recited in return. Ask a physician the same question, and you are
certain to hear it. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that these four
words have made their way into books, movies, decades’ worth of medicaltelevision
shows and, to the point of this essay, the television adaptation of
Diana Gabaldon’s 1991 cross-genre novel, Outlander. 1
An understanding of the history and meaning of the oath, however, seems
rarely to correspond with its pervasive use. Indeed, prominent bioethicist
Robert Veatch has remarked that the modern status of the Oath is consistent
with a pattern of
physicians who are isolated from the substance of serious religious
and philosophical scholarship, making uninformed reference to the
Hippocratic Oath as a short-form placeholder for a serious ethical
theory. 2
In the United States, that ‘serious ethical theory’ was articulated in 1979 by Tom
Beauchamp and James Childress in their seminal text ‘Principles of Biomedical
Ethics’. 3 Now in its eighth edition, the so-called ‘principlist approach’, with its
four, clearly delineated norms of Respect for Autonomy, Beneficence, Nonmaleficence
and Justice is the most commonly used framework for resolving
ethical issues that arise in clinical care in most non-Catholic healthcare
settings. The Oath is captured within the principle of non-maleficence, thus
serving as but one ethical obligation of modern physicians.
122

Part FIVE
Texuality . Materiality

Tartan Through the Stones:
Scottish Dress and the Costuming of Outlander
Brenna A Barks
Ever since Sir Walter Scott ‘swathed Edinburgh in tartan’ 1 , tartan and
Scottishness have been indelibly linked. From the Tartan Army that
travels the world supporting the national football team; to the inclusion
of corporations, nations – and states within them – and universities in the
National Register of Tartans; to film and television costumes, tartan is a
visual indicator of a character or entity’s ties to Scotland.
This can be used to comic effect, as with the flamboyant costumes used
by Alan Cumming when hosting the reality television series The Traitors
(US). But it is often used in its most obvious interpretation: to set a character
apart from the world, but as part of the community/nationhood/culture
of Scotland. The most popular way to do this is Scotland versus England;
we see this in Braveheart (1995), in Rob Roy (also 1995) and we see it in
Outlander (2014–).
However, to reduce the costuming of Outlander to such a simply binary
is ungenerous. The show lasted ten years, across eight seasons, and is based
on a series of 22 much-beloved books, the main nine novels averaging a
thousand pages each. Instead, it is part of Outlander’s magic that it is able
to simultaneously tell its own story, while also providing almost intimate
insight into life during the ‘long’ 18th century, following in the footsteps
of Scott’s Waverley in its selkie’s call to an international fandom plunged
into the depths of Scottish history. As an art and fashion historian, I am
naturally most struck by Outlander’s use of known visual tropes to seduce
unsuspecting viewers into a history lesson. For purposes of brevity (see the
above-mentioned length of the series, both written and filmed), this paper
will focus predominantly on the beginning: the first book and the first season.
This does not mean that Outlander does not utilise such tropes, but it
uses them to its subtle advantage. In series one, it taps into the Scotland
vs England stereotype, but one that is specific to its 18th-century timeline:
Highlander (tartan) vs Red Coat. The ‘Red Coat’ is the bogeyman of many
a former colony (or indeed union country), making it a very easy story to
138

Tartan Through the Stones: Scottish Dress and the Costuming of Outlander
‘read’ in the show’s visuals. The initial costume design amplifies this trope
through Terry Dresbach’s choice of almost drab tartans; this makes for a
more striking contrast with the reds, buffs, golds and blues of Black Jack
Randall and his Dragoons and the other regiments.
This is most apparent in the second set of posters for Season 1. For the
season premiere, we see Claire in visual limbo. Her body is angled toward
the figure of Jamie, in his rather drab tartans, but her head is turned towards
the viewer, her hand stretched in the same direction. She is central in her
bright blue 1940s day dress – the only time this type of pastel is used – and
her expression is unreadable. Is she letting him go or reaching for him?
In the second poster, Claire wears a robe à l’anglaise in a tartan that creates
visual symmetry with Jamie, and she is clearly no longer in limbo. The hand
she threatens with her dirk dons the coat cuff, not of a 1940s tweed-wearing
professor, but a Red Coat. To drive home the point, the second half of the
season has a companion poster: depicting Captain Randall in full red and
blue uniform, not just reaching for Claire, but with his cavalry sabre raised
and ready to swing down upon her.
The purpose of these posters is twofold: to entice viewers to the show who
might not be familiar with the original books, and to excite anticipation
in the existing fandom who had waited decades to see it brought to life on
screen. Both sets of viewers would have had what is known in the theatrical
and entertainment world as ‘thresholds of expectation’. Thus, a reduction
to the accepted binary trope of Red Coat vs Highlander is a clever choice,
as it automatically meets that threshold.
The previous observation, that tartan – and to a lesser extent, tweed –
is an instant visual for Scottishness can be both a boon and a hindrance
here. Tartan, like any textile, is not stagnant; its manufacture, structure and
aesthetic evolve with technological advancement. The advent of chemical
dyes in the Victorian era influenced the colours used in tartan weaving and
their brightness; the Industrial Revolution’s various innovations meant more
delicate patterns could be employed in the setts and more fabric could be
produced (in bulk) than would have been possible on the standard hand
loom of the 1700s. This results in a very different look to the tartans used in
Outlander than were actually worn in the 18th century. But the latter would
startle any viewer – new, seasoned fan, or fashion historian alike – out of
their willing suspension of disbelief.
What’s more, the role of the costume designer goes well beyond simply
dressing the actors. Costume designer and UCLA professor, Dr Deborah
Nadoolman Landis (creator of Indiana Jones’s iconic look in Raiders of the
Lost Ark) describes the film costume designer’s purpose as twofold:
139

PART SIX
The ‘Outlander Effect’ . Industry . Tourism

The Outlander Training Programme: Accounts from
Below-the-Line Workers in Scotland’s Screen Sector
Lisa W Kelly and Katherine Champion
Fans of the Outlander TV series will be familiar with the sumptuous
fabrics and greenery that adorn set locations such as Lallybroch, the Palace
of Versailles and River Run, alongside the various herbs and plants that
protagonist Claire uses in her role as healer. Yet, as part of our interviews
with Scottish-based trainees and senior production staff working on the
show, one member of the team admitted, ‘I didn’t know when I started on
Outlander what the Greens department was.’ A niche but vital part of any
large-scale production, the Greensperson is responsible for sourcing, creating
and maintaining all natural set dressings – such as trees, grass, flowers,
rock, herbs and soil – elements that are particularly visible in Outlander’s
distinctive visual world. This reflection therefore demonstrates how
Outlander, and its entry level Training Programme, has helped demystify the
range of below-the-line roles essential to high-end television while offering
up unique opportunities to Scotland’s screen industry workforce.
The Outlander Training Programme was established in 2014 to nurture
a skilled talent base of below-the-line workers in Scotland’s screen sector.
The aim was twofold: to train the next generation of crew and prepare
trainees for the freelance workforce, thus benefiting both Outlander, as the
largest and most expensive TV series to be filmed in Scotland to date, and
the local film and TV production community. Delivered with support from
Screen Scotland and ScreenSkills’ High-End TV Skills Fund, the programme
has since trained 170 Scottish-based crew across a range of departments,
enabling new entrants, with little experience of the industry, to receive
intensive ‘on-the-job’ training within a real work environment. While the
scheme concluded in September 2024 when the production of Season 8
of Outlander wrapped, a similar training programme was established for
the prequel series Outlander: Blood of My Blood, which began filming the
same year.
As a high-end inward-investment production produced by Sony and
Left Bank Pictures for the Starz pay TV network in the United States, the
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The Outlander Training Programme: Accounts from Below-the-line Workers
size and scale of Outlander facilitated traineeships across production
management, technical and craft departments. Roles were available in the
following areas: Accounts, Art Department, Assistant Director, Camera
& Video, Costume, Locations, Make-up, Production, Post-Production,
Props and Set Decoration. More niche specialisms, such as Drapes and
the forementioned Greens, were also included; the Drapesperson being
responsible for all drapes, upholstery and fabrics unrelated to costuming
on set. The training programme was therefore able to address specific skills
gaps within Scotland’s workforce and also offer opportunities not readily
available to those working on low budget and independent productions.
With Outlander coming to an end (not quite a permanent ‘Droughtlander’
at the time of writing due to the extension of the franchise with the prequel
series), we take this opportunity to reflect on the findings of qualitative
research we carried out in the initial stages of the Outlander Training
Programme in 2016 and 2017. For this, we conducted a series of interviews
and focus groups with trainees and their mentors, along with senior members
of the Outlander production team, to examine the decision-making processes
behind basing the production in Scotland and the impact the training
programme – and Outlander more broadly – has had on below-the-line
workers trying to establish a career in Scotland. Addressing the themes
to emerge from the research, we recognise the significant role Outlander
has played in Scotland’s screen story by enhancing infrastructure, building
confidence and supporting a new generation of media workers. However,
we also argue that its legacy is complex, as it stands as both a model of what
sustained investment can achieve and a reminder of the sector’s ongoing
volatility.
Incentives and Infrastructure
Outlander can be understood as an example of an inward-investment –
or ‘runaway’ – production in which the artistic and economic intersect
(McDonald, 2011; Mayer, 2017; Sanson, 2024). Diana Gabaldon’s
hugely successful book series takes Scotland as its original setting and
basing production in the country lends authenticity to the TV adaptation,
with showrunner Ronald D Moore describing Outlander as ‘a love letter
to Scotland in a number of ways’ (Bennett, 2016: 15). However, in an
increasingly competitive global marketplace, New Zealand and Eastern
Europe were initially considered as alternative locations that could stand
in for the Highlands due to ‘budget, available crew, studio facilities and a
myriad of other issues’, likely to include the unpredictable weather (ibid).
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PART SEVEN
Temporality . Memory

The Shifting Paradigm of the Fantastic Marvelous:
Time Travel and Genre Hybridity in the Outlander Serial
Television Drama
Michael A Unger
Introduction
The disappearance of a British nurse named Claire, who touches the
standing stones of Craigh na Dun in 1945 and finds herself suddenly
teleported to the Jacobite uprising in Scotland in 1743 during the first
episode of Outlander (Starz: 2014–present), has set the stage for a time
travel adventure and romance that has sustained itself for eight seasons.
This critically acclaimed historical/fantasy drama television series embraces
the ontological flexibility and narrative pleasures of time travel by initially
presenting an earthbound fantasy in Season 1, followed by a science fiction
worldbuilding narrative arc in Season 2. This paper examines how the
first two seasons of Outlander constitute what I coin as ‘the displacement
of the fantastic’: an ongoing structural segue that is indebted to Tzvetan
Todorov’s notion of a literary construct of the fantastic marvelous. Todorov
argues that a narrative’s protagonist, and by extension the reader, can
switch from the fantastic as a duration of uncertainty in the narrative to
the marvelous. My intervention then fuses a reading of the supernatural
entity or phenomenon as accepted and explained in contemporary ‘complex
TV’ (Mittell, 2015) like Outlander. The displacement of the fantastic thus
allows for the television/streaming viewer to experience two time travel
pleasures and premises couched in one drama. While different definitions
of the fantastic as a mode exist, ranging from duration of ‘uncertainty’
(Todorov, 25), ‘a sense of wonder’ (Mendlesohn, xiii), ‘magic’ (Worley,
10), to the ‘perception of impossibility’ (Attebery, 9), the key difference that
remains constant between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction
articulates a fictional reasoning, logic or a fixed set of parameters of cause
and effect that counters the inexplicable in fantasy.
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And Finally…
Ten Outlander Questions Answered
Diana Gabaldon
in conversation with Willy Maley

Outlander and scotland: Touchstones and Signposts
Willy Maley: Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone is the first novel published
since the TV adaptation. I wonder if you heard the voices of Caitríona and
Sam in your head while you continued the story of Claire and Jamie, in a
way that affected your writing?
Diana Gabaldon: Well, no. They’re both astonishingly good actors and
they inhabit their roles to the hilt (there’s a mixed metaphor if I ever saw
one…) – but their roles (by necessity) aren’t completely congruent with the
characters and stories I write, so they aren’t usually in my mind at all when
I’m working. Beyond that… I actually know both Sam and Caitriona as
Real People and consider them both friends. And their Real Voices aren’t
anything like Jamie’s or Claire’s.
Sam has the advantage of actually resembling Jamie physically (having
gone through a heck of a lot of hard work to do so), while Caitriona really
doesn’t resemble Claire much. Show-Jamie and Show-Claire are both great,
though – and the actors have wonderful chemistry and a close friendship/
working relationship, which is much more important than the nuances of
physical appearance. 1
However – the books are the books and the show is the show, as I tell
people (continuously). Both are really good, but the fact is that the show
can’t use more than 10 per cent of what’s in the books, and even that much
material has to be re-shaped in order to fit the necessary structure for
episodic television.
While I don’t wish to malign any of the hardworking, talented and
dedicated screenwriters, I have the impression that some of them feel (overtly
or covertly) that the filmed story is theirs, and will make unnecessary changes
or additions because they want – perhaps unconsciously – to put their own
stamp on the story, rather than because such amendments are required by
the exigencies of the show.
The vagaries and inconsistencies of filmmaking are many, and Claire’s hair
was one of them. Oddly enough, Caitriona’s natural hair color is actually
close to Claire’s, being a nice light brown. It’s not naturally curly, though, so
was adjusted for the occasion. However, in some scenes and some seasons,
Show-Claire’s hair is nearly black, and I have no idea why. (In some scenes
and seasons – many of the later ones, particularly – it’s a wig, which may
have affected the choice of coloration.)
Anyway. What I mean to say is that while a lot of the material in the show
is either mine or at least compatible with what I wrote, a lot of it isn’t. And
while I very much enjoy watching most of the invented/adapted/adjusted bits
(some are brilliant!) – with rare exceptions, I don’t ‘hear’ Sam or Caitriona
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Ten Outlander Questions Answered: Diana Gabaldon in conversation with Willy Maley
when I’m working with Jamie and Claire. (Claire has a much different accent
and timbre than Caitriona. She’s also shorter and slightly more rounded.)
Willy Maley: The books are about memory – recollection, remembrance –
as much as history. Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone opens with Claire and
Jamie reliving or re-loving a past moment of trauma and recovery. Did you
start out intending that the novels would be about their ageing process, and
their gradual building of resilience and spirit, as much as about historical
change? Or did those themes emerge gradually as the characters matured?
Diana Gabaldon: That’s a very perceptive question. Though surely history
is always a form of memory?
I started out to write a novel (any novel…) for practice, in order to learn
how to write a novel. I chose historical fiction to start with, because I was a
university professor (albeit in the sciences); I knew how to do research. I also
had access to the whole Interlibrary Loan System and concluded logically
that it would be easier to look things up than to make them up, and if I
turned out to have no imagination, I could steal things from the historical
record. (This works really well, btw…).
Which is just to say that I didn’t intend anything whatever, beyond learning
what it took to make my way through the whole mental and physical process
of writing a novel. I assumed that once I’d learned that, I could then write a
Real Novel – ie one that might eventually be published and read.
But as I got into the final stages of Outlander (having realized that I
improbably appeared to have written A Novel, I realized that the story didn’t
stop there, though I’d reached a good ending. So when I sent the complete
manuscript to my agent (whom I’d fortunately acquired during the writing),
I mentioned this.
He immediately sent the manuscript to five editors whom he thought
might be receptive – and within four days, three of them had called back
with offers to buy it. Perry (Perry Knowlton, may he rest in peace), being
an astute agent, had told them I thought there might be another book,
continuing the story. This caused them all to say, ‘Oh, trilogies are popular
right now – do you think she could write three?’ To which Perry (being a
good agent) said, ‘Oh, I’m sure she could,’ negotiated among them for two
weeks, emerged with a three-book contract and… bing! I was a novelist. (I
also had No Idea what might happen in books two and three, but you know,
sufficient unto the day…)
(The moral to this is that if there’s something you want to do, you should
just start doing it and see what happens. Success is never guaranteed, but
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Outlander and scotland: Touchstones and Signposts
failure is a sure thing if you never try.)
Given the circumstances, I definitely hadn’t considered what future books
might look like, or what I might mean to do with them. So the short answer
to your question is no – but the longer answer is yes.
You know that old bit of bad advice about ‘write what you know’? It’s
bad advice, because it limits your choices pretty severely – but you can find
out pretty much anything you need to know. As advice, it would be better
phrased as, ‘Don’t write what you don’t know.’ That still doesn’t make it
good advice, but it’s less bad. You’re not going to find out anything if you
don’t put words on paper, let’s put it that way.
(I’m thinking here of an excerpt from a manuscript that I read many years
ago (the writer of it had won a critique by me as a prize of some sort (this sort
of prize should really come with a warning, even without my involvement)).²
It was a romance, featuring a dashing 18th-century sea-captain, who finds
what he thinks is a mermaid (but is really a lost female time traveler in a
wet-suit) floating past his ship. OK, why not? But then the captain instructs
the first mate to take the lady to his ‘private bathing room’. Things kind of
went downhill from there, in terms of the writing about ships, sailing or the
18th century, but it was still pretty entertaining, if for all the wrong reasons.)
So I’m inclined to write What I Know – or what I can find out. In terms
of what I truly know, it’s mostly my own life and experience.
I’ve given birth to three children (in four years…) and I was paying close
attention. Ergo, if I write about what it feels like to be pregnant, I do so with
familiarity and vividness – because it was vivid, believe me.
Interestingly enough, it was a short scene that I wrote for (what turned
out to be) Outlander that was largely responsible for my a) getting a good
literary agent before finishing the book and b) learning the use of social
media before there really was such a thing (this was 1987–88 and the internet
as such didn’t yet exist in its present encompassing form).
At the time, there were three ‘Information Services’, as they were called:
Genie, Delphi and CompuServe (I doubt you’re old enough to remember
any of them). I stumbled into CompuServe while writing a software review
for BYTE magazine (that’s what I did to augment my meager salary as an
assistant research professor – that, and comic-book stories for Walt Disney),
and thence into an online group called The Literary Forum. This wasn’t a
writers’ group; it was just people who liked to talk about books, reading
and writing, though there were a few writers who hung out there regularly.
For someone with two full-time jobs and three children under the age of six,
it was the ideal social life.
I’d log into CompuServe every hour or so during the late-night (my main
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Ten Outlander Questions Answered: Diana Gabaldon in conversation with Willy Maley
writing time, first by necessity and then by choice), to break the monotony
of writing grant proposals or software reviews, and one evening, I found
myself having a sporadic argument (through the night) with a gentleman,
about what it feels like to be pregnant.
‘Oh, I know what that’s like,’ he wrote. ‘My wife’s had three children!’
I laughed (virtually) and said something like, ‘Yeah, I’ve had three children,
Buster.’ To which he replied, ‘Okay then, what’s it like?’
I said, ‘Well, it’s a little complex to explain in a 30-line message slot, but
I have this… thing… I wrote a few weeks ago, in which a young woman
explains to her brother what it’s like to be pregnant. I’ll post it in the Library
and you can read it.’
So I did. Everyone who’d been following the argument went and read the
piece – and they all came rushing back, saying, ‘What’s this? This is great!
Post some more of it!’
So I had an audience (most intoxicating thing ever, bar a few strictly
personal occurrences with my husband). And over time, I posted more bits
and pieces. (I don’t write in a straight line.) And people began saying, ‘This is
wonderful, you should publish it!’ I replied that I had No Idea what kind of
book this was – the notion of it being historical fiction was slightly impaired
by the time travel – let alone any idea as to how publishing worked – any
ideas? And the very helpful writers I knew there all told me, ‘Get an agent.’
(Adding advice about how to do that, as well.) And in the fullness of time,
John Stith, one of the friendly writers there, offered privately to introduce
me to his own agent, Perry Knowlton. [Who took me on, on the basis of an
unfinished first novel with no discernible genre, God bless him…]
Anyway – there’s a reason why I write long books; it’s because I like
Digressions – I discovered what the books were about while writing them. I
was writing out of my own muscle, blood, bone and memory, while shaping
the things that came through with imagination and fitting the story to an
historical framework.
And this, in fact, is the main reason why it takes me several years to write
one of the Big Books; I can’t write believably too far in advance of my own
age and experience, because I haven’t been there yet. And I try not to write
what I don’t (yet) know.
Willy Maley: We know about the influence of Dr Who, but was there any
particular historical novel or writer that inspired you?
Diana Gabaldon: I think I’d call it education, rather than inspiration, but
there are five writers (not all historical) whom I consider Role Models.
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Outlander and scotland: Touchstones and Signposts
Charles Dickens – from him, I learned how to make a character vivid and
unique. (Physical description is good, but good dialogue is invaluable. ‘Please
sir, may I have some more?’ ‘Tell her Barkis is willing.’ etc.).
Robert Louis Stevenson – who taught me a lot about constructing a
narrative and how to (and how not to…) focus a plot. Also how to do
emotion briefly, but strikingly.
Dorothy L Sayers – I learned plot-pacing and structure from her, but
more importantly, I learned how to show the nuances of social class (as
well as character) through dialogue, and to consider morality as an intrinsic
component of a good story. (I mean, they call it The Three Little Pigs and
the Big BAD Wolf for a reason… this is why good stories have heroes and
villains. A good story must have conflict, and if you consider (what I’m
rather loosely calling) morality as a structural part of the story, you have a
much more important and engaging conflict.)
PG Wodehouse – I learned how to balance a complex plot (and kick the
legs out from under it periodically) from him; also, the use of humor for
pacing, as well as character development. Also, the grace of playing with
language for effect.
And John D MacDonald – from him, I learned how to encapsulate a
character with one sentence, how to handle a continuing series character
and how to do deft backstory. Also (in his larger books, like Condominium
and Barrier Island) how to handle multiple POV characters, each of whom
has a personal subplot, as well as their role in the overall story. (Frankly, I’m
afraid that even John MacD would have a seizure of some sort if he happens
(in the afterlife) to come across A Blessing For A Warrior Going Out (the
tenth – and final – book in the main Outlander series).)
Granted, I adore James Clavell’s historical novels, and had I not already
figured it out from other books, he would have shown me the importance
of detail in making a story immersive and immediate. He did me a postmortem
favor, though; when my (long-suffering and much beloved) editor
read the manuscript for The Fiery Cross, she wrote to me (in shock), ‘Did
you know this book is 500,000 words?!?’ ‘Yes,’ I wrote back cheerily, ‘It’s
exactly the same size as Shogun.’ The publishing people Murmured, but
they didn’t try to make me cut it, and both Mr Clavell and I were justified
by our sales results.)
Willy Maley: There is a real sweep to the novels, traversing the globe, taking
in Scottish history, British colonial history, American history and tackling
big issues like slavery. Did you ever feel daunted as the story spiralled out
beyond Scotland?
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Notes on Contributors
Brenna A Barks is a fashion historian focusing on Scotland, primarily during the long 18th century. She
earned her master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh and plans to begin her PhD in the near future.
Dr Verena Bernardi is a senior lecturer and academic administrator in the English
Department at Saarland University, Germany. Her research interests include vampire
studies, cultural studies (North America and Scotland), television studies and fandom
studies. She is the author of Us versus Them, or We? Post-2000 Vampiric Reflections of Family, Home and
Hospitality in True Blood and The Originals. Among others, she has published in Hospitality, Rape and
Consent in Vampire Popular Culture (2017) and is a co-editor of Covid-19 in Film and Television: Watching
the Pandemic (2024).
Sheila Briggs is Associate Professor of Religion and Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Southern
California. Professor Briggs’ research has covered feminist theology, 19th- and 20th-century German theology,
early Christianity, theories of history and modern liberation movements. Briggs currently studies the relation
of gender to slavery and of slavery to martyrdom in ancient Christianity. Other projects focus on accounts
of the past that never happened except in the imagination of contemporary popular culture, such as the TV
series Xena Warrior Princess.
Dr Katherine Byrne is Senior Lecturer in English in the School of Arts & Humanities at the University of
Ulster. Her research interests include Victorian literature and medicine, adaptation and period drama, women’s
writing and Gothic studies, and she has published widely in all these areas. She is the author of Tuberculosis
and the Victorian Literary Imagination (2011) and Edwardians on Screen: From Downton Abbey to Parade’s
End (2015) and co-editor of Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama (IB Tauris, 2018).
She is co-author, with Julie Anne Taddeo, of Rape in Period Drama Television: Consent, Myth, and Fantasy
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).
Katherine Chalmers is Professor of Economics at California State University, Sacramento. Her area of
research specialization is the intersection of rural economic development and public finance, and she has
published academic journal articles, book chapters and policy papers on these and other subjects.
Max Chambers is Locum Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and NHS Orthopaedic Surgeon with FRCS (Trauma
& Ortho).
Dr Katherine Champion is Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries and Cultural Policy at the University of
Glasgow. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of the Cultural Industries whose work is concerned with the
intersections of creativity, place and work.
Rebecca A Cobb, PhD, LMFT, is a clinical professor in the Couples and Family Therapy program at Seattle
University. She has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, received national and regional
guild awards and is a former president of the Washington Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Nelson Correia is a film and television researcher with an interest in the history of screen production in
Scotland. His contribution to this volume is based on his PhD research project on the evolution of the Scottishbased
freelance screen workforce, involving Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Edinburgh and
the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive.
Dr Yvette de la Vega, EdD, is an adjunct professor of literature and writing at St Thomas University
and an Advanced Placement British Literature teacher at Monsignor Edward Pace High School in Miami,
Florida. She holds an EdD in Instructional Leadership and a Master of Science in English Education from
Nova Southeastern University, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Miami.
Her research focuses on Outlander studies, female representation, and pedagogical strategies for ethnically
diverse student populations. She was awarded a 2024 Funds for Teachers Fellowship.
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Dr Teresa Dokey has over 25 years of senior-level experience in the film and television industry – specialising
in global distribution, co-productions and acquisitions – and holds a PhD in Film and Television Studies from
the University of Glasgow and both a graduate degree in Global Affairs and an undergraduate degree in
Global Studies from the University of Denver.
DR Alexandra Dold is a literary scholar and historian. Her PhD thesis explores the Outlander novels
as public history, which she developed through an interdisciplinary approach, applying concepts such as
metafiction and intertextuality to Gabaldon’s work. In 2025, she graduated with a PhD from the University
of the Highlands and Islands in the same ceremony during which Diana Gabaldon was awarded an honorary
doctorate. Alexandra shares her passion for Outlander and historical fiction in the classroom, where she
teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow, and with wider audiences through her social
media channels.
Christie Eppler, PhD, LMFT, is a program director and professor in the Couples and Family Therapy program
at Seattle University. The focus of her clinical practice, teaching and research is systemic resilience, justice
and narrative therapy.
Jesper Ericsson is Curator of Numismatics at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of
Glasgow.
Danielle Fatzinger completed her PhD in 2021, examining the contents, contexts and themes of the four
Gaelic manuscripts copied by Scottish scribe Eoghan MacGilleoin in the late 17th century, one for patron Rev
Lachlan Campbell (1675–1708) and two for Col Colin Campbell (d 1714). She currently works in learning
and teaching administration at the University of Glasgow while continuing to explore her research interests.
Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling Outlander novels, described
by Salon magazine as ‘the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science PhD
with a background in scripting Scrooge McDuck comics.’
Ioannis Gigis is a Professor of Orthopaedics & Sports Injuries at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
Greece, where he also practises Orthopaedic Surgery in a private clinic. He is a member of the PAOK FC
Medical Team, a member of the European Society Sports Knee Arthroscopy (ESSKA) and the European
Shoulder Society (SECEC-ESSSE). He attended kindergarten in Edinburgh for a year when he was young and
he has visited Scotland numerous times since. He is a member of Historic Environment Scotland (HES), the
National Trust of Scotland (NTS) and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. He is married to Kiara Ntoutsou, a
microbiologist, and they have two children, Mara and Ioannis Jr who are currently studying Medicine in
Rome.
Olivia Happel-Block, PhD, is an educator who loves to read and write. Her academic research interests
include mythology, religious studies, alchemy, literature and classics. She teaches English for Santa Barbara
City College along with Mythology and Film Studies at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, USA.
Jane A Hartsock, JD, MA, is a Medical Humanities professor and Bioethicist at Indiana University in
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. She publishes regularly in the academic literature and has presented at international
and national conferences on the use of literature to develop narrative competence and ethical sensitivity.
Archie Henderson is the Social History Curator at Paisley Museum and author of several Paisley and
Renfrewshire-focused social history displays for the Paisley Museum Re-Imagined Project, including Paisley
and the Jacobites. The PMR Project is a major capital investment encompassing a complete redevelopment
of Paisley Museum to create a cultural attraction of international quality.
Charlene Herselman is a lecturer in the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of
Pretoria, South Africa. Her research interests include heritage and cultural tourism, tourist guiding, literary
tourism and screen tourism. She recently completed her PhD, focusing on screen tourism at heritage sites
with Outlander as the major case study.
Laura Huici-Sancho is Senior Lecturer in Public International Law, University of Barcelona. She has more
than 25 years of teaching and research experience in the field of Public International Law and European
Union Law. Her research interests include the application of international law for the protection of the
environment and international protection of human rights; social rights, with special emphasis on gender
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Outlander and scotland: Touchstones and Signposts
issues; and emerging human rights, such as the right to water and the right to the environment. She also works
on EU law and on EU democratic legitimacy, citizenship and institutional reforms. Recent work focuses on
‘international cooperation in tourism’.
Juliette Irretier, MA, is in her final year of a part-time PhD in Film & TV Studies at the University of Glasgow.
Her thesis is a geopolitical investigation of German Outlander fandom and screen tourism in Scotland, exploring
issues of political ideology, placemaking and Heimat (homeland). Alongside her research, Juliette works as an
academic tutor.
Dr Robyn Irving is a retired Clinical Child Psychologist, a memoirist and children’s author, as well as a wife
of over 30 years and a mother of two young adults. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
Cornelia Kaufmann is a part-time PhD student at the Institute of Languages, Cultures & Societies of the
School of Advanced Study, University of London, where her thesis focuses on ecopoetry from Oceania and
the nature/culture divide. She has been a fan of Outlander for years and loves travelling around Scotland.
Cornelia is a published writer and poet and works as a marketing communications specialist in North Rhine-
Westphalia, Germany.
Dr Darren S Layne received his PhD from the University of St Andrews and is creator and curator of the
Jacobite Database of 1745 (JDB1745), a wide-ranging prosopographical study of people who were involved
in the last rising. His historical interests are focused on the protean nature of popular Jacobitism and how the
movement was expressed through its plebeian adherents. He is a passionate advocate of the digital humanities,
data cogency, and accessible, open research for all.
Dr Riitta-Marja Leinonen is a cultural anthropologist who specialises in multispecies relationships and
northern cultures. Currently she is working as a researcher at the University of Oulu, Finland, in a project,
Ageing with nature. She has previously worked in projects that have studied gendered division of labour in
the Arctic, war horses in World War II, child-animal relations in Finland, and the effects of pollution from
One Health perspective in the Arctic. Her methodological areas of specialisation are sensory and multispecies
ethnography, and oral history and narrative methods. In addition, she is interested in Scottish culture and
history and, of course, enjoys good books and whisky.
Shady Grove Oliver is a fiction writer and journalist. She has a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine
from Columbia University and has long been interested in the intersections of healthcare and compassionate
storytelling. She was part of the team to win the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of sexual
assault and failures of law enforcement in rural Alaska.
Rosanne S Parent is a PhD Candidate at Laurentian University. Rosanne is a French Canadian, a medieval
historian and a linguist focusing on the Viking Age. She also works and teaches at the Laurentian University.
Bill Paterson has enjoyed long-established acting career spanning theatre, film, radio and television. He
plays Ned Gowan, Edinburgh lawyer to Clan MacKenzie, in Outlander Seasons 1–3. For more on Bill see
https://WWW.billpaterson.co.uk
Séverine Peyrichou, MSc, is a heritage consultant who has written one of the first master’s theses analysing
the particular impact of Outlander on heritage spaces (2017, University of Stirling). From 2019 to 2025 she
delivered the award-winning ‘Rediscovering the Antonine Wall’ project funded by the National Heritage
Lottery. Séverine currently works as a freelance consultant for Midhope Castle to develop a sustainable
interpretation programme. She also works as a trilingual guide for Mary’s Meanders, one of the first
companies offering bespoke Outlander tours in Scotland and has appeared in several episodes of Outlander
and Blood of my Blood as a supporting artist.
Jordan Rich is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts School of Sociology and Anthropology. Her interest
in people and places has led her all over the world. Fascinated by the emotions that drive the human experience
and why Outlander means so much to so many, she spent several months in solo exploration of Scotland.
Sharenda Roam is a teacher and ​author who shares early Christian wisdom and biblical spirituality. She
has a DMin from George Fox University in Leadership and Global Perspectives and an MA in Humanities
from Arizona State University. She is a Religious Studies faculty member in higher education with over 17
years’ experience.
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Dr Jamie Lee Rothenburger, DVM, MVetSc, PhD, DACVP, is an assistant professor at the University of
Calgary’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Alberta, Canada. As a veterinarian who practices pathology, she
diagnoses disease in many animal species, including wildlife. Her published research focuses on infectious
diseases at the intersection of the environment, people, wildlife and domestic animals (the One Health
concept). She regularly contributes to the Western Producer, Canada’s largest agricultural newspaper, with
over 260 articles published for the general public.
Dr Andi Schwartz is the Coordinator of the Centre for Feminist Research at York University and a Research
Associate with the Critical Femininities Research Cluster. Andi has a PhD and MA in Gender, Feminist, and
Women’s Studies from York University, and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University. Her academic
work has been published in Punk and Post Punk, Feminist Media Studies, Social Media + Society, First
Monday, Feral Feminisms, and others. Andi lives in Tkaronto with her dogs.
Svetlana Seibel is a postdoctoral research associate in North American Literary and Cultural Studies at
Saarland University, Germany. She holds a PhD in North American Literary and Cultural Studies from Saarland
University, where she completed her dissertation on contemporary Indigenous popular culture in North America
as a member of the International Research Training Group ‘Diversity.’ She is co-editor of the volume IndigePop:
A Companion (Peter Lang 2024). Her work has been published in journals such as Slayage, Transmotion,
Studies in Canadian Literature, European Journal of American Studies and Recherches Germaniques, as well
as in various edited collections.
Dr Jock Stein is a poet and Church of Scotland Minister. His recent poetry collection, Temple Garden:
Poems of Faith and Curiosity, is available from Wipf and Stock, and his ‘big book’ Temple and Tartan:
Psalms, Poetry and Scotland is available along with most of his smaller poetry booklets from Handsel Press.
Lorna Stevens is an Associate Professor of Strategic Marketing in the Marketing, Business and Society
Division, School of Management, University of Bath. Much of her research explores experiential consumption
and media consumption, and often considers the ideological underpinnings of cultural texts.
Julie Anne Taddeo is research professor of history at University of Maryland, United States. She is the coauthor
(with Katherine Byrne) of Rape in Period Drama Television: Consent, Myth, and Fantasy (Lexington,
2022) and co-editor (with Katherine Byrne and James Leggott) of multiple books on period drama television,
including Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Period Drama (Manchester University Press, 2022)
and Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama (Bloomsbury, 2018).
Stephanie Shakay Tierney is an Armenian-American fifth-year PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the
University of Edinburgh. Her fieldwork was conducted in Scotland amongst activists and artists working on
the process of memorialising the people accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland. Stephanie Shakay’s
research is concerned with how histories of the witch trials are rediscovered and reassembled through the lens
of the present, who people are that engage in this memory work and what their motives and motivations are
for carrying out the remembering of the accused witches of Scotland. She is interested in kinship, politics of
memory and memorialisation, inhabited/inspirited landscapes, material culture, anthropology of religion and
of death, and witchcraft.
Michael A Unger is an Associate Professor of Film at Sogang University’s Graduate School of Metaverse
in Seoul, South Korea. He is a writer, director, and editor of documentaries, shorts, music videos, and
experimental work screened and broadcasted in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His latest documentary
Sijo has received numerous film awards in 2024–25, and his documentary Far From Forgotten is part of the
permanent collection at the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History in Seoul, Korea. His latest
music video ‘Not So Fast’ featuring MC Meta won the Audience Award at the Berlin Short Film Festival
in 2022. He has published work in Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Visual
Communication Journal, Journal of Cultural Geography, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Quarterly Film
and Video, Studies in Documentary Film, Asian Cinema and other periodicals as well as in two anthologies
Global London on Screen and World Entertainment Media: Global Regional and Local Perspectives.
293

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