Alison O'Malley-Younger's Celtic Connections

Dr Alison O'Malley-Younger has co-edited, with Professor Willy Maley from the University of Glasgow, a collection of essays entitled Celtic Connections: Irish-Scottish Relations and the Politics of Culture (Peter Lang, 2013). The volume offers a sustained and up-to-date analysis of the cultural connections between these two neighbour nations, too often overwhelmed by their larger neighbour, England. As well as co-editing the volume, Alison has contributed an essay: 'Doctors and devils: diagnosing racial degeneracy in Stevenson's Gothic fiction'. The collection also contains a chapter by Lauren Clark entitled 'Second cities of Empire: Celtic consumerism exhibited.' Lauren was recently awarded her PhD from the Department of Culture.

Alasdair Raffe in the History Lab

Dr Alasdair Raffe (Northumbria University) will be appearing in the History Lab on Thursday 4th October 2012 (Priestman 013). His talk is entitled 'Charles II, James VII and the problems of the Scottish Church.' All History Lab seminars start at 5pm, last for 30-40 minutes and are followed by an optional trip to the pub and a meal. Staff and students from all faculties are invited.

Susan Mandala in Style

Dr Susan Mandala has published an article in the summer 2012 edition of the journal Style about the work of the North East crime-writer Sheila Quigley. In 'Crime Fiction as Regional Fiction: An Analysis of Dialect and Point of View in Sheila Quigley’s Bad Moon Rising', Susan argues that although the book is ostensibly a crime novel, it makes its most significant contribution as a regional novel by using point of view operations and dialect representation to confront a number of worryingly vicious stereotypes currently circulating about the urban poor. Offering a rare positive view of urban poverty in contemporary British popular culture as it does so, Bad Moon Rising also takes the canon of English Northeastern regional writing in a welcome new direction.