Dr. Theresa Mackay

Years ago, Theresa listened to her heart, and it changed everything. Banking was no longer her thing, but education, museum studies, heritage, and most especially Scottish history, was. Shifting from money to lifelong learning and old things, she held leadership positions at the Royal BC Museum and the BC Museums Association while completing her Master of Letters in the history of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Her published research on rural innkeeping and the impact of women on the tourism and hospitality infrastructure in Scotland’s early nineteenth century won the Women’s History Scotland Leah Leneman prize and was subsequently featured extensively on the BBC.

Theresa built on this work in her PhD, uncovering the ways Gaelic-speaking women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries managed coastal foodways in the western Highlands and Islands. This research is soon to be published. Theresa’s educational journey also includes teaching at Capilano University, Camosun College, and Royal Roads University prior to joining UVic in 2019. Here she developed and taught HSTR 371 Flavours of the Past: Scottish Food History and has taught ATWP 135 since 2021. Now her soul sings and banking is a distant memory.