Home University: University of Guelph
Email: kbecke06@uoguelph.ca
Education: BA (Hons) History, Dalhousie University; MA History, Dalhousie University
Research Fields: Scottish History
Supervisor: Cathryn Spence
Kristen Becker is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Guelph. She completed both her BA and MA in history at Dalhousie University. Kristen's previous research focused on various legal changes in English and Scottish history and Anglo Scottish relations. Her BA honours thesis examined the use and legality of torture during the Stuart reign in England and Scotland to determine if (and how) this influenced Anglo Scottish relations. Kristen's MA thesis examined legal reform in Cromwellian Scotland during the 1650s to determine if (and how) the brief union affected Anglo Scottish relations, and the ways in which legal reform influenced contemporaries' own understandings of the laws. Building upon her previous projects, Kristen will be tracing the act of Treason throughout early modern Scotland from the reign of James VI to the reign of George II, to determine what changed and why, and how these changes influenced contemporaries understandings of the law, the relationship between state and society, a national identity, and contemporaries rights as subjects of the crown.