PhD-leader
I am responsible for the PhD-programme at ILOS.
Academic Interests
I am a historian by training, and most of my research has been on eighteenth-century British history. My original specialisation was on Scotland in the 1790s with a main focus on those Scots who supported the British state during the French Revolutionary War. In this, I was particularly interested in the concept of loyalism and the nature of loyalty to the British union state in Scotland. In more recent years, I have taken an interest in commercial warfare at sea, and in what might be termed the 'war on trade' between Britain and France in the North Sea in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries. Central in this has been my research on the phenomenon of privateering, and on the question of how neutral nations should relate to the privateers of the belligerents, as well as on British naval policies more generally.
Alongside my historical work, I take a keen interest in contemporary Scottish (and British) politics; first and foremost with respect to questions of constitutional reform and devolution in the UK, and party-politics in Scotland.
Teaching
British studies, teaching the following courses:
- ENG 1505, British Civilisation
- ENG 2501, British Politics
- ENG 2502, British History
- ENG 4516, Northern Ireland
- ENG 4517, The British Constitution
- ENG 4518, Scottish Politics
- ENG 4500, British and American Political Literature in the Eighteenth Century
- ENG 4550, Theory and Method in American and British Studies
Higher education and employment history
I hold a Ph.D. British history from the University of Edinburgh, 2003.
Before joining the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages to teach British Studies in 2005, I worked at the University of Stavanger, teaching general European history.
