6 August 2013

History programme bolstered with new appointments

The University of Dundee can announce three new appointments to its History staff, broadening the programme's research and teaching range.

Jim Livesey, former Head of History at Sussex University, joins Dundee as Professor of Global History. Professor Livesey has research expertise in transnational, and in particular, transatlantic relations. His extensive knowledge of global history will help inform current and future research and teaching programmes at the University.

Also joining the History department at Dundee are Graeme Morton, who will be taking up the post of Professor of Modern History, and senior lecturer Dr Annie Tindley.

Professor David Finkelstein, Dean of the University's School of Humanities, welcomed the academics to Dundee saying, 'These appointments represent the start of an exciting new chapter for our History programme.

'They each bring new expertise and fresh ideas that will help us to tailor ever more innovative courses and produce research outputs by working alongside the other talented researchers we have within the School of Humanities and other areas of the University.'

Dr Tindley is an expert in the history of the Scottish Highlands and has worked closely with scientists in the past to study the ethnography of these areas to see how they fit with existing historical perspectives. She joins Dundee from Glasgow Caledonian University.

Professor Morton is renowned for his research into Scottish nationalism and the Scottish Diaspora. He has previously collaborated with the Scottish Government on matters of diasporic culture and identity and will move to Dundee from the University of Guelph in Canada, where he led the Centre for Scottish Studies as the first privately endowed Chair of Scottish Studies in North America.

With funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant, Professor Morton is currently examining extreme weather and patterns of migration from Scotland during the period 1770 to 1988.

Professor Livesey was recently awarded a two-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship for his 'Thinking at World's Edge' project, which explores Irish intellectual history in global contexts. His work will contribute to a series of international workshops to take place at Dundee to help define new research agendas in global history.

The University offers a diverse programme of post-medieval History, with special coverage of social, economic, cultural, religious, political and urban history. Specialists in Scottish, British, European and American history cover the early-modern period, and the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

Dundee is in the first rank of History Departments in Scotland achieving one of the highest scores in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. The quality of teaching has also been commended in internal and external reviews.

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