Rebecca McGilveray (2018)

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Rebecca comes to Columbia from Glasgow, Scotland and is the first Scottish student to join the OHMA programme. She has recently graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a degree, with honours in History. At school, Rebecca never particularly enjoyed History – finding that it was less about understanding and more about passing an exam. She found more joy in listening to her grandparents and Great Aunts recalling their lives and the adventures they had been on. Only later on, while at university did she discover Oral History and finally found a discipline that felt intuitive and natural to her. Her dissertation ‘The Bucky Made Me Do It’: Exploring Glasgow’s relationship with Buckfast and its Impact on Crime, Deindustrialisation and the Glasgow Effect’ used oral history testimonials to form the backbone of her research into a heavily neglected aspect of Glasgow’s history. Her research interests include histories of addiction, toxic masculinity, homelessness and how conceptualisations of the body and self influence Oral History testimonies. She is looking forward to broadening her horizons outside the context of her home city and cannot wait to join this year’s cohort at OHMA.