Centre for History

Director, Centre for History
Tel: (01847) 889 622
jim.hunter@uhi.ac.uk

Director of the Centre for History since its establishment in 2005. The author of eleven books about the Highlands and Islands, Jim Hunter has also been active in the public life of the area. In the mid-1980s, he became the first director of the Scottish Crofters Union, now the Scottish Crofting Foundation. Between 1998 and 2004 he was chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the north of Scotland’s development agency. In the course of a varied career, Jim Hunter has also been an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He is presently a board member of Scottish Natural Heritage and chairs SNH’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

Jim Hunter’s first book, The Making of the Crofting Community, described by a contributor to Scottish Historical Review as ‘one of the most significant books of its generation’, has been in print for more than thirty years. His other books include A Dance Called America: The Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada (1994), Last of the Free: A History of the Highlands and Islands (1999) and Scottish Exodus: Travels Among a Worldwide Clan (2005). Professor Hunter was made a CBE in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007.