Callum Irvine

I am a current doctoral researcher looking at Lateness in Modern Literature at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Professor Peter Mackay (and formerly, the late Professor John Burnside as co-supervisor), having recently graduated with a Master of Studies from the University of Oxford and a Master of Arts from the University of St Andrews. Alongside my academic work, I have also consistently worked to shape and improve Higher Education policy and Pedagogical practices at various institutions. As of September 2024, I teach in the School of English at the University of St Andrews on the following module(s):

– EN1004: Empires and Revolutions: Literature 1680-1830

– EN4425: Celtic Modernisms

And have previously taught on the following module(s):

– EN1003: Culture and Conflict: An Introduction to Nineteenth- and Twentieth Century Literature (AY 23-24)

My academic interests primarily surround Modern Irish and Scottish Literature (post-c.1800), as well as the conversations that arise between the ‘new’ and the ‘traditional’, and the inheritance of earlier work and myths in the creation of new writing – part of which feeds into the broader phenomenon of lateness, stretching from cultural and literary expressions of memorialisation and elegy as they emerged predominantly in the Romantic moment – but having precursors in Early Modern, Medieval, and Antique authorship – though to the present day.

My doctoral research builds upon my two previous pieces of extended, independent research: 'Death of The Naturalist: The Late Seamus Heaney' (Supervised by Professor Don Paterson in 2021); and '"Seen at the End of Day": The Lateness(es) of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden' (supervised by Professor Seamus Perry). My thesis – provisionally titled, 'The First Certainty' – aims to address the troublesome phenomenon of 'lateness' by offering a taxonomy and updated theory of lateness in literature, taking and adapting interdisciplinary approaches, and exploring how poets approach and deal with death and endings in their work and how this contributes to their ‘late style’. Demonstrating the variety of authorial manifestations of lateness, from unburdenings of public responsibility to serene ‘life reviews’, particularly in close readings of poets from the 20th and 21st centuries in Britain and Ireland, this thesis will work towards defining the limits and the ascription of ‘late styles’.

Recently, I presented a new area of research interest at the Fourth World Congress of Scottish Literature hosted by the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures at the University of Nottingham. This research paper – titled 'Another Version of the Pastoral, or, A Country and A City: Scotland and Nottingham' – was funded by both the Universites Committee for Scottish Literature and St Leonard's College, St Andrews and looked at developing and updating arguments made in the seminal works Some Versions of the Pastoral by William Empson and The Country and The City by Raymond Williams to explore the version of the Pastoral that arises in the 'middle-lands' of Scotland and England, illustrating this by using the works of D. H. Lawrence, Catherine Carswell, Alan Sillitoe, and Don Paterson.

Self-reflexivity in authorial and personal development continue to engage me, though I am currently developing works on the following topics: John Clare and Sex; Embarrassment; Poetic Closure; The Poetry Collection; Seeking the Scottish Voice in Literature; Performativity, Wit and Subversion in [Douglas] Dunn, Don [Paterson], and [John] Donne; Legitimising Rural Voices in Clare, Kavanagh, and Heaney; Heaney's Bad Spirits; Heaney and Italy; The Mid-Century (Urban) Pastoral; 'The Tradition of Late Style'; 'Lateness and the (Self-)Archivist'; Hugh MacDiarmid's 'Mature Art'; and Poets and their Pets.

I have a chapter forthcoming which covers Hugh MacDiarmid's 'Mature Art' – adapted from a paper I presented at the inaugural MacDiarmid conference in Brest (2023) – which will appear in an edited collection of essays (published by BRILL) on MacDiarmid's life and work. This will be one of the first pieces of scholarship to utilise the manuscript and archival remnants of MacDiarmid's 'Mature Art' to see how its constituent parts – however problematically and contradictorily – function as a whole and what they reveal about MacDiarmid last, ambitious, though ultimately abandoned project.

I have also started a creative non-fiction essay on book collecting as an act of community, connection, and love using my own book collecting experiences as a starting point, using materials gathered for my 2024 entry to the J. D. Forbes Collecting Prize for which I was 'Highly Commended'.

Throughout my time at Higher Education institutions, I have held a number of representative posts in societies and academic settings. Higher Education Policy and Pedagogical Practice are important to me, and as such, I was consecutively elected to serve as the President of the School of English in both Honours years at St Andrews, then as President of the English Graduates at Oxford (EGO), and now I am serving my third consecutive term – the first in history to do so – as the President of Postgraduate Researchers at the University of St Andrews, and for a period of this, I was the Acting President of Postgraduate Taught programmes.

In these roles throughout the last eight years, I've sat on and chaired various committees bringing together students and staff members (e.g. the Staff-Student Consultative Committee, the School Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, the School Council, the Student Representative Council) and senior management (e.g. the University Senate, the Postgraduate Group, Postgraduate Forum, Libraries and Museums Committee, the Student Experience Strategic Management Group, the Research, Innovation, and Impact Committee, and the Academic Monitoring) to address institutional equality, diversity, and inclusion, student experience, academic and institutional strategy, research impact, culture, and environment, and have contributed to policy papers, university-wide reports, and reviews/audits at faculty and institutional levels (such as the University Review of Learning and Teaching for the School of English and the University Libraries and Museums Unit at the University of St Andrews, the Enhancement-Led Institutional Review, and the first ever Tertiary Quality Enhancement Review). In my roles, I have also engaged with external organisations to aid in making partnerships and mutual improvements, such as with the Scottish Universities Press and their provision for Early Career Researchers.

My work in these areas has been recognised repeatedly, with multiple nominations from students for my teaching practice as Outstanding Teacher in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, multiple nominations for the Proctor's Award for Academic Representation and the Student Volunteer of the Semester in my representative roles, and most recently, in the role of Postgraduate President being elevated to sit on the Student Representative Council of the St Andrews University Students' Association and the Senatus Academicus of the University of St Andrews, both of which are the highest-level decision making committees of the university and students' union.

I have recently taken on the role as a Project Officer and Leadership Coach for the International Education and Lifelong Learning Institute (IELLI, formerly CEED), in which I act as a supervisor and mentor for the independent research and leadership projects undertaken by those in the Laidlaw Scholars Programme, offering support and guidance to their personal and academic development. I have supported the independent research and leadership projects of 40 scholars so far, as well as written and delivered seminars on Impact, Proposal and Grant Application Writing, and Effective Research.