Bob Irvine holds an Honours MA in English and Philosophy from the University of Aberdeen, and a PhD from Edinburgh. He taught at Brunel University in London before returning to his current post in 1999.

Dr Robert P. Irvine’s PhD was on gender and genre in the novels of Walter Scott, looking at Scott’s creative engagement, in his fiction, with the female-authored domestic novel of his time. His current interests lie in the relation between literary form and political ideas (particularly ‘liberal’ ones, broadly conceived) from the late seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth; and especially in Scottish writers in this period.

Dr Irvine welcomes research proposals in any area that overlaps with the above.

Research activity

Dr Irvine's edition of Annals of the Parish by John Galt, one of the first volumes in the Edinburgh University Press Edition of the Works of Galt, was published in 2020. He is currently working on another volume in this series (The Member and The Radical, political novels from 1832) and an edition of Walter Scott's poem The Lord of the Isles (1815) for the AHRC-funded Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott's Poetry, on which he is co-investigator.