I am a Senior Lecturer in Scottish Literature within the Department of Humanities.

My research focuses broadly on twentieth century Scottish literature. I am currently working on a monograph on Scottish literary magazine culture from 1950 to 2000 for Edinburgh University Press, as well an edited collection on Scottish magazines and political culture from 1968-1999 (also EUP) with Scott Hames and Malcolm Petrie.

From April 2026- December 2028 I will be working on an AHRC-funded project on Glasgow writer Archie Hind ('Beyond The Dear Green Place: The Lost Works and Literary Networks of Archie Hind'). You can read more about this project here: Archie Hind Archive at Strathclyde.

With Angela Bartie I co-edited The International Writers' Conference Revisited: Edinburgh, 1962 (Cargo Publishing, 2012), which was launched in August 2012 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The research from this book inspired the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference 2012-2013. I have also published another co-edited book in this area (The Scottish Sixties: Reading, Rebellion, Revolution? (Amsterdam: Rodopi 2013).

I am a member of the The Association for Scottish Literature and founding co-editor (with Scott Hames) of the International Journal of Scottish Literature from 2006-2010. I am a member of Universities Committee for Scottish Literature

I am an affiliated staff member of the Scottish Oral History Centre, and many of my current research students also adopt oral history methodologies in their work.

I have supervised a broad range of PhDs, mainly on Scottish literary topics (including Naomi Mitchison, Alexander Trocchi, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alasdair Gray, Agnes Owens, community writing in Glasgow, Glasgow and deindustrialisation).

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss a potential PhD project.

At undergraduate level I teach modules on 'Sixties Britain: Literature, Culture, Counterculture', 'Glasgow Narratives', 'Detective Fiction' and 'The Construction of Scotland: Text and Context'.

I was previously module co-ordinator for both the undergraduate work placement and the postgraduate research placement classes in English & Creative Writing. 

My research broadly focusses on twentieth century Scottish literature. I am author of Questioning Scotland: Literature, Nationalism, Postmodernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and co-editor of The Scottish Sixties:Reading, Rebellion, Revolution? (Rodopi, 2013), The International Writers' Conference Revisited: Edinburgh, 1962 (Cargo, 2012) and Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Literature and Culture (Rodopi, 2004).

I am currently working on a monograph on Scottish literary magazine culture from 1950-2000 for EUP, as well as an edited collection on Scottish magazines and political culture from 1968-1999 (also EUP) with Scott Hames and Malcolm Petrie.

From April 2026 until December 2028 I am PI on the AHRC project 'Beyond The Dear Green Place: The Lost Works and Literary Networks of Archie Hind'.