Rate My Professor Liam McIlvanney

Liam McIlvanney is the inaugural Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies and Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies in the Division of Humanities at the University of Otago. He holds degrees from the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford and previously taught at the University of Aberdeen. His academic career focuses on modern Scottish literature, the work of Robert Burns, literature of the Scottish diaspora, eighteenth-century Scottish literature, Ulster-Scots poetry, contemporary Scottish fiction, Scottish crime fiction, and creative writing, particularly crime fiction. McIlvanney has edited significant volumes including The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature (2012, with Gerard Carruthers) and The Good of the Novel (2011, with Ray Ryan). He serves on the advisory board of Studies in Scottish Literature and as an international advisor to the Scottish Historical Review Trust. His scholarly publications include the award-winning monograph Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland (2002), which received the Saltire First Book Award; chapters such as "The View from the Octagon: Robert Burns in New Zealand" (2024) in The Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns and "Cancer of Empire: The Glasgow Novel Between the Wars" (2018) in British Literature in Transition, 1920-1940; and articles like "Scottish Poetry in the South Seas: John Barr at the Edge of the Map" (2017) in the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies.

As a novelist, McIlvanney has achieved acclaim with crime fiction novels including Where the Dead Men Go (2013), winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best New Zealand Crime Novel; The Quaker (2018), recipient of the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year; The Heretic (2022); and The Good Father (2025). Additional honors include a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Robert Burns Studies, University of Glasgow; the Waitangi Day Literary Honour from the New Zealand Society of Authors; patronage of the Imprint Book Festival, East Ayrshire; and honorary membership in the Irvine Burns Club. He has contributed to public discussions and symposia, such as Scotland's Colony? Rethinking Otago's Caledonian Connections (2019) and Brexit and Beyond (2019). McIlvanney's dual roles as scholar and author underscore his influence in Scottish studies and literature.