Margaret Stewart profile picture

Job title:

Senior Lecturer in Architectural History

Office:

Minto House, B1.61a

Biography

I was born and educated in Edinburgh and at the universities of Nottingham and Glasgow. My lecturing career began in 1995 at Edinburgh College of Art, and continues with ESALA. Formerly I was a curator of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Collection at the University of Glasgow. More recently I curated the historic plaster cast collection at Edinburgh College of Art, and more recently I am exploring film as a medium for communicating architectural and landscape history.

Teaching

Currently I lecture to undergraduate and postgraduate students on a wide range of topics from seventeenth-century French and Scottish to twentieth-century, and also aspects of landscape history. My own Honours-level courses are 'Scottish Architecture 1650-1810', Scottish Architecture pre-1650’- survey courses, including landscape, that places Scotland within the wider European context. These courses have a strong emphasis on historiography, research and the role of new media for interpretation and outreach. I also teach an Honours-level course, 'C.R. Mackintosh: Architecture and Design in Edwardian Scotland' (University of Edinburgh Teaching Award, 2016). This course explores the contemporary context of women artists and art and design in a period of dynamic cultural change. Topics include Celticism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau and emergent Modernist design in Scotland, Europe and USA 1900. Both courses involve, when permitted, visiting collections, buildings and sites.

Research

Architecture and landscape design c.1700, art and architecture in Scotland c.1900, the development of Edinburgh in the eighteenth century and the history of neoclassical cast collections are my main research interests. My research outputs to 2017 include the first published monograph on the earl of Mar, 'The architectural, landscape and constitutional plans of the Earl of Mar, 1700–32 (2016). In 2019 I directed and produced a documentary film called Loudoun about architecture and landscape in Scotland c.1700. In addition to writing an essay about Mackintosh’s architectural practice, I am currently planning a film about architectural and urban design in Edinburgh and Athens c.1840.

PhD Supervision Topics

  • Scottish and European architecture 17th to 18th centuries
  • Scottish and European designed landscapes 17th to 18th centuries
  • Romantic classicism (architecture and landscape) 18th to 19th centuries
  • Urban planning 18th to 19th centuries
  • Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his contemporaries, c.1900