Scottish Studies Gains Two Professors

The calibre of applicants for the University of Otago's new Chair in Scottish Studies was such that the University has appointed two professors.

The Stuart Chair in Scottish Studies was endowed by the Stuart Residence Halls Council, as part of the University's Leading Thinkers Initiative. The council's gift of $1.5m was matched on a dollar-for-dollar basis by the Government under its Partnerships for Excellence programme.

Announcing the appointments, Vice-Chancellor Professor David Skegg says the chair attracted an outstanding field of applicants.

"The selection committee recommended offering the Stuart Chair to Dr Liam McIlvanney. It also suggested that, if possible, Dr Angela McCarthy should be offered an appointment as a professor of Scottish and Irish history. I was pleased to accept that advice."

Professor Skegg says the University of Otago is delighted to be appointing two young scholars who have already demonstrated such brilliance and productivity.

"Liam McIlvanney and Angela McCarthy will be in the Departments of English and History, respectively, but they will also be members of our new Centre for Scottish and Irish Studies. Along with Peter Kuch - the Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies - they will form the nucleus of an outstanding centre for research and teaching."

New Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies Dr McIlvanney is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen. After gaining a First Class Honours degree in English and Politics from the University of Glasgow, he graduated with a DPhil degree from the University of Oxford. His monograph, Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland won the Saltire First Book Award in 2002, and was described in the Bulletin of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society as "the most important work to have appeared on Robert Burns in a generation". His collection of essays, Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700-2000, co-edited with Ray Ryan, hashelped define the emerging academic discipline of Irish-Scottish Studies. He has contributed essays and chapters to a number of books and journals, and reviews regularly on Scottish subjects in the London Review of Books. He has extensive experience of teaching in the field of Scottish literature.

One of the referees from Scotland made the intriguing comment that "Liam McIlvanney would fit well into a community whose ancestral ghosts and presences include The Bard and James K Baxter".

Dr McIlvanney says he is looking forward to taking up the role as New Zealand's first Professor of Scottish Studies.

"As the location for a Scottish Studies programme, Otago – with its strong Scottish heritage - could hardly be bettered. The internationalising of Scottish Studies, both intellectually and institutionally, is the next stage in the discipline's development, and I am delighted to be part of this process at Otago.

"My research will focus on issues of literature and identity in relation to the Scottish Diaspora. A great deal of worthwhile research has assessed the statistics of Scottish emigration; my own priority will be to explore the ‘Diasporic Imagination' - to examine how Scottish identity is constructed and reflected, not just in migrant journals and shipboard diaries, but also in novels and stories and poems and plays."

Dr McIlvanney says the new Centre for Scottish and Irish Studies has extraordinary potential.

"The experience of Scottish-Irish research centres in Aberdeen, Dublin and elsewhere has shown just how dynamic and invigorating this comparative context can be. The challenge is to establish the new Centre at Otago as a home for top-quality interdisciplinary research into the history and culture of Scotland and Ireland."

Dr McIlvanney will commence his appointment later this year and will be based partly in Scotland until he takes up full-time residence in Dunedin at the beginning of 2009.

Dr McCarthy, who has been appointed as Professor of Scottish and Irish History, is a New Zealander who has spent most of her career to date in the United Kingdom and Ireland. After completing an MA (with First Class Honours) at University College Dublin, she received a PhD degree from Trinity College, Dublin, following research on Irish migration to New Zealand as portrayed in personal correspondence. She was a research fellow at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and also held a Stout Research Fellowship at Victoria University in Wellington. Most recently, Dr McCarthy was in the Department of History at the University of Hull. She has published extensively on the history of the global Scottish and Irish diasporas in the 19th and 20th Centuries. She has written and edited several books and is now completing another book on Images of Scottish and Irish Ethnic Identities in New Zealand since 1840.

Dr McCarthy, who begins this month, plans to continue her interest in both Scottish and Irish history and the comparisons between the two, particularly in relation to historical migrations.

"I am completing a major research project on the representations of Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand and developing a new collaborative project comparing the Scots and Irish with other migrants in New Zealand who were admitted to ‘lunatic asylums'. Such comparative work is crucial as it is the means by which we can ascertain what was distinctive about the histories of Scotland and Ireland and their peoples.

"The Centre for Scottish and Irish Studies at the University of Otago is likely to evolve into a major hub for students, established scholars and the wider community. By developing national and international linkages and exchanges – as well as joint research and teaching agendas - the Centre will make a significant contribution to the field."