Dr Colin Nicolson

Senior Lecturer

History University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Dr Colin Nicolson

Contact details

About me

Colin Nicolson is a leading expert on the history of the American Revolution. His work focuses on the origins of the Revolution in colonial Boston and the Imperial Crisis of 1765-1776. He is an elected fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. He has recently completed a twenty-year externally funded project, the Papers of Francis Bernard (6 vols.) and co-authored a book on the pre-Revolutionary politics and friendship of John Adams. His contribution to REF 2021 included three double-weighted four star books. For REF 2028 he has published another double-weighted four star book, and is currently writing John Adams, A Diplomatic Life, the first book-length treatment of Adams's entire diplomatic career. It aims to trace Adams’s personal transformation from diplomatic novice to skilled negotiator by examining his diplomatic missions to Europe (France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands) as a representative of the American Continental Congress (1778-88) and his subsequent influence on U.S. foreign policy during his vice presidency (1789-97) and presidency (1797-1801). He loves family, fine books, and music, and is a dedicated writer and enthusiastic teacher.

He has supervised 21 PhDs, 14 as principal supervisor. He currently is principal supervisor to three current PhD candidates and co-supervisor to one, with two further PhDs starting in 2025. Several former PhDs hold academic positions and have published their first books in 2023–2024. He welcomes enquiries and applications for PhD projects on the American Revolution Era, U.S. diplomacy and political history generally.

Successfully completed PhDs include:

Maria Pride, “Privateering in the Eastern Ports of Massachusetts, 1775-1783” (2024). Philippe Maron, “John Adams and American–French Diplomacy, c.1778-1801” (2024). Jamie MacPherson, “ ‘Virtuous Intimates’: The Political Friendships of John Adams, 1774-1801” (2020), published as The Friendships of John Adams, 1774-1801: The Art of Politics (Routledge 2024). Dr. Macpherson is teaching at Stirling and Glasgow universities. Nicola Martin “The Cultural Paradigms of British Imperialism in the Militarization of Scotland and North America, 1745-1775” (2019), AHRC-funded with Dundee, publication forthcoming. Dr. Martin is teaching at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Shaun Wallace, “Fugitive Slave Advertisements and the Rebelliousness of Enslaved People in Georgia and Maryland, 1790-1810” (2018), ESRC funded with St. Andrews, published as In Pursuit of Freedom: Enslaved Runaways and Resistance in the U.S. South, 1790-1860 (University of Georgia Press, 2024). Dr. Wallace is a member of the history faculty at the University of Bristol. Christopher F. Minty, “The Origins of Loyalism in New York, c.1765-1775” (2015), funded with several U.S. research fellowships, published as Unfriendly to Liberty: Loyalist Networks and the Coming of the Revolution in New York City (Cornell UP, 2023). Dr. Minty, formerly of the Adams Papers, is an Editor at the Center for Digital Editing, University of Virginia. Stuart Salmon, “The Loyalist Regiments of the American Revolution, 1775-1783” (2010). Dr. Salmon is teaching at Edinburgh University. Five projects on American Evangelicalism (2007-10).

Current PhD projects:

Counterinsurgency Strategy and the American Revolutionary Era: A Reinterpretation; Ranging in the Southern Theatre of the American Revolutionary War, 1776-83; Reclaiming Native Futures: Native American Educational Visionaries and the Struggle for Cultural Sovereignty, 1970-1990 (as co-supervisor); The Origins of the University of Stirling

He has edited the Bernard Papers, a six-volume historical documentary edition of considerable relevance to scholars of the imperial crisis on the eve of the Revolution. The project was funded by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellowship. The AHRC described the Bernard Papers project as "an outstanding proposal meeting world-class standards of scholarship, originality, quality and significance." He is a member of the editorial advisory board for the Select Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson. He is currently writing John Adams, A Diplomatic Life, the first book-length treatment of Adams's entire diplomatic career.

Community Contribution

Scottish Qualifications Authority
Scottish Education Department and Scottish Qualifications Authority: Question setter (1995-2001) and Principal Examiner (1998-2001) for (a) the CSYS in History and (b) the Advanced Higher in History, both in field of study (g): the American Civil War. Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum and Higher Still Development Unit. Consultant on the preparation of study packs for the new Advanced Higher in American History, 2000-2001.

Divisional / Faculty Contribution

Faculty of Arts

Board member and subject representative

Faculty of Arts

staff appointment committees

Student Recruitment Officer. Department of History

Website Administrator. School of History and Politics

Postgraduate Director. School of History and Politics

Research Committee. School of History and Politics

Director of Undergraduate Programmes in History. School of Arts and Humanities: History and Politics Division

Postgraduate Director. History, Heritage and Politics

Postgraduate Director. History, Heritage and Politics since c.2017

Deputy Director for Postgraduate Training (School of Arts and Humanities)
Since 2012, have recently taken a lead role in developing doctoral training in the School of Arts and Humanities.Doctoral training provided by the School of Arts and Humanities (SAH) complements the Skills Development Programme run by the university's Stirling Graduate School (SGS). While the SGS programme focuses largely on researcher development and generic skills, the SAH activities concentrate on enhancing and applying subject skills within and beyond the academic environment. The SAH Postgraduate Skills Week in December, run jointly with the School of Applied Social Science, offers cross-disciplinary sessions on employability skills (writing, teaching, presenting research papers, publishing research, and understanding the impact agenda) and two days of intensive subject-focused sessions covering qualitative and quantitative research methods and topical research issues and approaches. I also co-ordinate Arts Training Modules for Masters programmes.

Education

M.A. Hons. in History, summa cum laude

Ph.D.

Event / Presentation

The "Infamas Govener": Francis Bernard and the American Revolution. University of Stirling, Department of History, Research Seminar Programme 1995

Governor Francis Bernard and the Origins of the American Revolution. University of Edinburgh Modern History Research Seminar Series

A Plan “to banish all the Scotchmen”: Victimization and Political Mobilization in Pre-Revolutionary Boston . Global Nations? Irish and Scottish Expansion since the 16th Century

The Stirling experience: intermediate assessment. Higher Education Academy. East Midlands Workshop. Preparing Undergraduates for the Dissertation
Higher Education Academy

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/…tation_20100616/
The workshop had been devised as a regional event – hopefully the first of many in the East Midlands – to discuss the key issues involved in preparing students, and indeed departments, for the undergraduate dissertation.

Friendship in Tough Times: John Adams and the Terrors of War, 1775. School of Arts and Humanities (Stirling) Postgraduate Conference, 2014. Inter-Disciplinary Reflections in Adversity
University of Stirling

John Adams and the British Question. British Group in Early American History Annual Conference

http://www.britishearlyamerica.stir.ac.uk/conference.html

John Adams and the US Presidency. A Response to Neil York on 'Plato and the American President: Thirty-five as the Age of Eligibility'. Seminar on Constitutional Thought and History

Panel on Neil York on 'Plato and the American President: Thirty-five as the Age of Eligibility'

Imaginary Friends: John Adams and Jonathan Sewall, and their American Revolution. Loyalism and Loyalty in the British Empire Workshop

This workshop explores the meaning, character and diversity of loyalism in the British Empire. Inspired by a recent growth in the literature on loyalism in old- and new-world contexts, Loyalism and Loyalty in the British Empire is intended to deepen our understanding of a topic which connects with numerous themes in British, imperial and British World studies, but one which has so far lacked a comparative perspective that considers how loyalism and loyalists differed across time and space.

Response to Neil York on 'Plato and the American President: Thirty-five as the Age of Eligibility'. Seminar in Constitutional Thought and History

Panel on a Paper by Prof. Neil L. York. Participants: 

Historical Documentary Editing
Workshop for (online) Summer School of the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities

Making Boston Pay: Or How To Defend An Empire Without Provoking A Revolution. University of Dundee, History Department Research Seminar Programme 2005

Negotiating British Imperialism: Gov. Francis Bernard and the Imperial Crisis, 1764-1769
Colonial Society of Massachusetts
http://boston1775.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=colin+nicolson

Negotiating British Imperialism: Gov. Francis Bernard and the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764-67. Colonial Society of Massachusetts Annual Meeting, 2012

Presenter. Book Launch for Bernard Papers Vol. 2
Colonial Society of Massachusetts

The ‘Infamas Govener:’ Francis Bernard and the Origins of the American Revolution in Massachusetts. British Association of American Studies, Annual Conference

Writing Historical Biography
University of Stirling
Workshop for Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities

Writing Historical Biography
University of Stirling
Workshop for Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities

External Examiners and Validations

Coffee, Chocolate and Tobacco: Overseas Trade and European Consumption
University of Glasgow

History Degree Programme
University of Dundee

MSc in Historical Research
University of Edinburgh

American History 2
University of Edinburgh

Finn Pollard, PhD. “In Search of 'the American, this new man': The Literary Quest for an American National Character, 1760-1826
University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh. PhD Examination

MPhil in American Studies
University of Dundee

MPhil in History
University of Glasgow

Iain MacIver, PhD. "Revolutionary Governorship: The Evolution of Executive Power in Virginia, 1758-1781"
University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh. PhD Examination

Michael Griggs, PhD. "‘For Christ’s Crown and Covenant’: An Historical Interpretation of Scottish Covenanting Political Theology and its Contribution to the American Revolution in the Backcountry of North Carolina"
University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh. PhD Examination

Robert Donald MacNiven, PhD. "Slaughter was Commenced: A Study of American Revolutionary War Massacres"
University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh. PhD Examination

Barbara Ball, PhD. “Differential development on the Ohio River, 1850-1880: A historical and genealogical study of two small towns in Ohio and a rural district of West Virginia, before and after the U.S. Civil War”
University of Strathclyde

University of Strathclyde. PhD Examination

Krysten Blackstone, PhD. "The Hardest Conflict: Morale in the Continental Army During The American Revolutionary War, 1775-1783"
University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh. PhD Examination

Megan King, PhD. ' "Let us dare to read, speak, think, and write": Patriot Fundamentalism and Nonviolent Civil Resistance in Boston and Philadelphia, 1764-1776'.
University of Kent

University of Kent PhD Examination

Other Academic Activities

peer reviewer for articles submitted
The William and Mary Quarterly, The Journal of American History, The Historian and Massachusetts Historical Review

Other Project

The Bernard Papers Project

http://bernardpapers.com
The Bernard Papers project is publishing a multi-volume documentary edition of the papers of Francis Bernard, governor of colonial Massachusetts between 1760 and 1769. Edited by Colin Nicolson (University of Stirling),the Bernard Paperswill provide five volumes oftranscribed manuscriptsfor the study of colonial Massachusetts and the American Revolution, followed by a calendar volume of Gov. Bernard's entire collection. Bernard's entire collection. The projectaims to understand how andwhyimperial officials in the American Colonies struggled to implement Britishcolonial policy in the face of an incipient revolutionary movement. It provides research materials for historiansinvestigating transatlantic connections, political behavior, and ideology, andreveals the disintegration of British imperialism in Massachusetts before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. stablished in 2000, the Bernard Papers is funded by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. In 2011 the editor was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) to complete research for the project. The AHRC evaluation described the Bernard Papers project as "an outstanding proposal meeting world-class standards of scholarship, originality, quality and significance."

Imaginary Friends

A study of the friendships of John Adams during the advent of the American Revolution, 1760-76.

Professional membership

British Association for American Studies
Royal Historical Society, Organization of American Historians and European Association of American Studies

Elected Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society
Massachusetts Historical Review
http://www.masshist.org/about

Elected Member Colonial Society of Massachusetts
Colonial Society of Massachusetts

European Association of American Studies
European Association of American Studies

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Royal Historical Society
http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/

Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians

Royal Historical Society
Royal Historical Society

Scottish Association for the Study of America
Scottish Association for the Study of America
Founding member and office-bearer: secretary (1999-2001), treasurer, 2001; chair (2003-05).

University Contribution

School of Arts and Humanities

 Co-ordinator of postgraduate training in ARTP01 and ARTP02.