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 literature (particularly fiction) 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. Questions of gender and class and the interrelation of those two categories remain a recurring concern.

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

Research activity

Dr Irvine's edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Prince Otto (1885) for the New Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson’s works appeared in May 2014. His Selected Poems and Songs of Robert Burns for Oxford University Press (2013) was published as a World's Classics paperback in January.