Join us as PhD candidate Shanna Bryman discusses her remarkable journey from Phoenix, Arizona, to research at the University of the Highlands and Islands Institute for Northern Studies.
“I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona—about as far from the Scottish Highlands as you can get. My childhood obsession with ancient civilisations started when I was ten years old, looking at a replica of an ancient Egyptian canopic jar in my social studies class. I was completely overwhelmed—not by the object itself, but by the person it represented. Who were they? What did their lives look like? That surge of curiosity never left me. Growing up, I was lucky enough to travel much of Western Europe with my father, who regularly attended work conferences abroad. While he was in meetings, I was loose in cities like London, free to wander and wonder. Everything changed when I first visited Edinburgh in 2006. The city took my breath away. But it was heading north into the Highlands, and up to Skye, that something deeper emerged. I felt, inexplicably, like I had come home. That feeling was powerful and a little maddening. History wasn’t something in a book for me—it was alive, and I needed to be part of it.
Despite that passion, I ended up graduating from Arizona State University with a degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology. I then spent nearly eight years at Arizona Youth and Family Services working in behavioural health—supporting children and families in crisis, designing curriculum, and training new staff. It was meaningful work and I enjoyed it, but history was always calling. During the pandemic, I had the opportunity to follow that calling. I enrolled in the Master of Letters in Viking Studies programme at the University of the Highlands and Islands. My MLitt dissertation explored the fate of the Picts in the Northern Isles and the role the Norse played in their disappearance. But it was during that programme and my research that my future thesis came into focus on women. I was motivated by my then module leader (and current PhD supervisor), Professor Alexandra Sanmark, to apply for the PhD programme, looking specifically at women and how they had been overlooked in leadership positions for centuries.
I have since moved to Scotland to complete my doctoral thesis, Making Herstory: Evaluating Female Leadership in the Viking Age. My thesis argues that Viking-Age women exercised real leadership in political, military, household, and economic domains, and that scholarship has largely missed it because of lingering androcentric assumptions from the Victorian era. Drawing on burial assemblages, runic inscriptions, Icelandic sagas, and other contemporary non-Norse written evidence, I have developed updated archaeological criteria for identifying leadership markers in the material record. It has been the most challenging and rewarding thing I have ever done.
I have spoken about this research at conferences in Berlin, Lincoln, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. I have excavated on Colonsay with the Norse and the Sea Project and participated in the Govan Stones Project in Glasgow. I have given lectures for UHI in the forms of modules, summer schools, and the INS public seminar series, and was even interviewed by BBC Shetland.
In February 2026, I submitted my thesis for viva examination—a moment I genuinely could not have imagined when I was sitting in that Phoenix office—and am very much looking forward to the next phase of my academic career.”
If, like Shanna, you feel inspired to join us at UHI Institute for Northern Studies then drop us a line on ins@UHI.ac.uk ,contact us through our website or our social media platforms.
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