Our Fellows – Dr Sam Leggett
Dr Sam Leggett is a Lecturer in Biomolecular and Medieval Archaeology in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.
“When I started at the University of Edinburgh in 2022 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow one of the first things my mentors encouraged me to do was to apply for Fellowship to the Society. It was the perfect way to start to meet people in Scotland outside of my academic department, so vital in those immediate post-COVID times.
Not only was everyone at the Society very welcoming, but it gave me a fantastic ready-made network of like-minded people to connect with and a fantastic array of events to go along to.
A recent highlight for me was Gordon Noble’s public lecture to the Society in March 2025. I think we all came away from that lecture very excited and jealous in the best way. What a celebration of all things Pictish and first millennium CE Scotland!
Access to these amazing events, the Proceedings, Society monographs and Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports (SAIR) has proved invaluable to my “ArchaeoFINS: medieval Archaeology of Fishing around the Irish and North Seas” Leverhulme project which wrapped up in March 2025.
It has allowed me to contextualise our core project sites at Dunbar, Iona, Finlaggan, Gairloch and Scalloway, to make sense of the wealth of new biomolecular data we have generated for Scotland from c. 500-1500 CE. Watch this space as we write up the results for publication!
It has been brilliant to see our students at the University of Edinburgh applying to become Fellows and applying for grants, networking at events and flourishing as part of the broader community dedicated to studying Scotland’s past.”
“What really struck me moving to Scotland and getting to know the Society is how fantastic it is to have the lower annual subscription rates for student and early career Fellows.”
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Fellows (members) of the Society are an essential part of the charity with one common passion – Scotland’s past.
By becoming a Fellow, you are joining the thousands of Fellows who are helping us work towards our vision: ‘Scotland’s past is for everyone to research, share, enjoy and protect, home and abroad.’
Anyone who is interested in Scotland’s history and archaeology can apply to become a Fellow, whether they are professionals in the field or not. Academic credentials and publishing experience are not necessary.
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