If you think the Darien Venture for Scottish settlers to colonise part of the isthmus of Panama and set up a trading hub was only a disaster, think again. Even though nothing about imperial projects is very moral, they’re still windows into many lives. In this case women - Dr Gina Bennett of the University of Arlington at Texas joins Susan Morrison to take us into the worlds of 1690s Scottish female investors, businesswomen and settlers. There’s getting into empire and there’s getting out of it. Samuel Hume at Aberdeen University is researching imperial conferences. What’s one of them? Find out how the British self-governing settler colonies - the dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand moved towards full independence with Sam (He’s also a podcaster doing his own history of the British empire at Pax Britannica - https://paxbritannica.info/ ) Finally, the women who would have won ‘Most Wicked Lady in Scotland!’ several years running had it been an award category in James VI’s kingdom: Elizabeth Stewart Countess of Arran, but was she just getting a bad rap from her enemies? Lisa Baer-Tsarfati of Guelph University explores female ambition.