The Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities is supporting creative-writing PhD student Katy Hastie to undergo a one week residency at Sweeney’s Bothy as part of a pilot programme to support doctoral researchers in creative practice through residencies.
SGSAH was established in 2014 to identify, develop and share world-class collaborative training for doctoral researchers in the arts & humanities at Scottish universities. With 16 member higher education institutions and more than 40 supporter organisations from the public, private and third sectors, they come together to inspire researchers who are capable, caring, ethical & reflective professionals who can make a difference in the world through their work.
Katy Hastie is a writer based at the University of Glasgow and her research explores the magnitude and intimacy of surveillance by looking beyond Orwell’s iconic 1984 to Proust’s earlier charged exploration of watching, and creatively considers the impact of infiltration on eco-activists in the writing of a novella.
Part of her approach is also to search for alternatives – how do people, places and stories resist the prevailing forces of virtual-living and monitoring?
Eigg, with its self-sustainable off-grid community, unique landscape and rich cultural heritage offers just that opportunity and during her residency Katy will work on her novella, research the island’s radical self-sustainable community (particularly the pivotal role of women in its formation) and seek out the alternative knowledge resident in the environment and mythology of Eigg as the ‘Island of The Big Women’.