Dr Calum Robertson

Dr Calum Robertson

Senior Curator, Modern & Military History

Responsible for: Scottish history collections, c.1750 to c.1850; the military collections, c.1600 to the present; and the bagpiping collections.

Research interests: Arms and armour; bagpipes and bagpiping traditions; the material culture of faith and migration; Scotland in the age of Enlightenment; museum and collecting histories.

E: calum.robertson@nms.ac.uk

Dr Calum Robertson is Senior Curator of Modern and Military History.

Dr Calum Robertson

Senior Curator, Modern & Military History

Dr Calum Robertson is a material historian with a broad range of interests and specialisms in the material culture of modern Scotland. He is responsible for the curation and development of three areas of the national collections, each of international significance: the Scottish history collections, c.1750 to c.1850; the military collections, c.1600 to the present; and the bagpiping collections. In addition, Calum has curatorial responsibility for the National War Museum at Edinburgh Castle.

Calum's research work is centered on the following areas and themes:

• Arms and armour, particularly Scottish weapons;
• The history of collectors and collecting, particularly weapons collectors and their collections;
• Bagpipes and bagpiping traditions;
• Objects associated with the Scottish Enlightenment;
• Objects associated with minority faith groups in Scotland, particularly material that embodies migratory and diasporic identity.

Calum is currently a member of the Executive Board of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History (ICOMAM) and an Advisory Board member on the AHRC-funded project ‘Beyond Borders: The Second World War, National Identities and Empire in the UK’.

Alongside colleagues at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Calum is a supervisor on the AHRC SGSAH Collaborate Doctoral Award project ‘Judaica in Scotland, 1817 to the Present: Objects of Faith, Migration and Identity’.

Calum received his PhD from Cambridge University, where he was a member of the Department of Archaeology’s Heritage Research Group. Prior to this, Calum received an MPhil in Archaeological Heritage and Museums, also from Cambridge, and an MA in Archaeology from Edinburgh University.

See Calum's work in the Research Repository.

Follow Calum’s research on X (formely Twitter) @ScottishModern