18 November

'Anglo-Scottish (mis)understandings and the Future of the Union' - AHRI public lecture, Wednesday November 20th

The growing political importance of how the Scots and the English perceive each other's national identity will be explored at a public lecture at the University of Dundee this week.

Professor Michael Kenny, of Queen Mary University of London, will deliver his talk on 'Anglo-Scottish (mis)understandings and the Future of the Union' in the D'Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre at the University Tower Building at 6pm on Wednesday 20th November.

In this lecture, Professor Kenny identifies the growing political importance of the ways in which the English and the Scots perceive each other's national identity.

This theme is explored in relation to emerging debates about significant changes in English nationhood. Criticising the adequacy of established critical ideas of 'Englishness', he argues that the renewal of English nationhood has its roots in a number of social, political and cultural changes since the early 1990s, and gives particular emphasis to its multi-faceted and contested quality. He finishes by considering whether and how these nations can come to a better level of mutual understanding.

Michael Kenny is a Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London and currently holds one of the Leverhulme Trust's Major Research Fellowships. He has published widely in the fields of modern British politics, public policy and political thought, and is the author of The First New Left (Lawrence and Wishart, 1995), The Politics of Identity (Polity, 2004) and The Politics of English Nationhood (Oxford University Press), which will be published in February 2014. Michael has also been a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Institute for Public Policy Research in London, and has just published an Introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of E.P.Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin, 2013).

His lecture is the latest in the Arts & Humanities Research Institute lecture series for 2013.

The AHRI is based within the School of Humanities at Dundee, and serves as a forum for research across the School's principal disciplines of English literature and creative writing, history, philosophy and aesthetics.

All members of University staff and students, and interested members of the public are warmly invited to attend. More information is available at www.dundee.ac.uk/humanities/artsandhumanitiesresearchinstitute

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
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