Responsible for: The Renaissance and Early Modern section’s collections of the material culture and history of Scotland from c.1450-1750. These encompass objects relating to the Scottish Renaissance and Reformation, Covenanting and Jacobitism, as well as notable Scottish figures such as Mary, Queen of Scots. Collections include Scottish weaponry, jewellery, ecclesiastical objects, and decorative woodwork and glass. 

Research interests: The material culture of Renaissance and Early Modern Scotland; networks and communities, especially Scottish communities in northern Europe; Anglo-Scottish relations; public and participatory history; mapping the early modern world; travel writing; cultural exchange and transmission; memorialisation and memory; object biography, meaning and mobility.

Anna Groundwater joined the department in 2019 as Principal Curator with responsibility for the management and overall curation of the section’s collections of the material culture and history of Scotland from c.1450–1750. Her role is to develop and manage a collections strategy for the Renaissance and Early Modern period, informed by current research in Scottish and public history, and with a view to enhancing audience engagement with our collections. She is also responsible for developing research strands, collaborative research and public engagement projects with external institutions.

Groundwater received her doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, and an M.A. from the University of Cambridge. Her original research was on the Anglo-Scottish borders at the time of the Union of the Crowns (1603), exploring governmental processes, networks of power, kinship and alliance, and identity. She has published widely on these themes, with further work on the blood feud, lordship, Mary Queen of Scots, James VI and I, and the use of social media in rethinking historical distance and social spaces. She has been formerly a trustee of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, secretary to the Scottish Medievalists, and council member of the Scottish History Society. She is currently a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and on the editorial boards of the Antiquaries of Scotland, and of the Scottish Archives, the journal of the Scottish Records Association. She is a reviewer for multiple publications including the English Historical Review, the Innes Review, and the Journal of British Studies.

She previously worked for over a decade at the University of Edinburgh, lecturing in Scottish and British history, the digital humanities, and cultural and public history. Her postdoctoral work was in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the same university on a recently discovered manuscript account of the playwright Ben Jonson’s ‘Foot-Voyage’ to Scotland in 1618.

Current objects of research include the Mary, Queen of Scots silver casket, the Fettercairn Jewel and the Ramsay watch given by James VI to Robert Kerr, earl of Somerset.

Read for free online: Decoding the Jewels: Renaissance Jewellery in Scotland