Jim MacPherson was born in Hull and grew up in Norfolk. His musical education began as a boy in church, where his father was an Anglican minister and his mother played the organ. He has sung professionally for over thirty years, studying as a Choral Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then performing with choirs across the UK and Europe, under conductors such as Harry Christophers, Bill Ives, Jeremy Summerly and Béla Bánfalvi.
These days, Jim is a Reader in History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, where he works on exploring the legacies of colonialism with communities across Scotland and the Caribbean, and teaches American history and Black radicalism through jazz and hip-hop. Jim’s most recent book (written with his wife, Mairi) is a study of James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson, empire and eighteenth-century history writing, and was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023.
