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Scottish Region speaker elected to Parliament

Professor Christopher Harvie, Ph.D., Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen.

Professor Christopher Harvie, who presented a paper entitled "The Right Side Of The Tracks: Transport In Scotland In The Time Of "Peak Oil" to the Scottish Region at it's Edinburgh meeting in March 2007 has been elected as SNP list Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Mid Scotland and Fife Region. Chris Harvie was a candidate for the Kirkcaldy constituency but came second to Labour, but gained sufficient votes to be elected from the Regional List under Scotland's system of proportional representation.

The son of a schoolteacher, Professor Harvie was born in Motherwell in 1944, but grew up in St. Boswells in the Scottish borders. He attended Kelso High School and the Royal High School in Edinburgh and studied at Edinburgh University, gaining a first class honours degree in history. He gained his PhD with a thesis on academic liberalism and democracy, 1860-1886 in 1972.

He was Lecturer in History at the Open University between 1969 and 1978 when he was appointed senior Lecturer. In 1980 he was appointed Professor of British Studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He has been Visiting Fellow at Merton and Nuffield Colleges, Oxford as well as Edinburgh and Strathclyde Universities. In 1996 he became Honorary Professor of Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth followed by being made Honorary Professor of History at Strathclyde University in 1999.

Professor Harvie has lectured extensively for the British Council and has undertaken lecture tours around the world. He has written extensively on a number of subjects, including North Sea oil, Scottish history and European regionalism. Professor Harvie is also a regular broadcaster and has made a number of documentaries for the Open University and BBC. He also made two radio series for the BBC, "Whitehall and the Boffins" for Radio Four and "The Fourth Reich?" for BBC Scotland.

Originally a Labour Party member, he co-authored a pamphlet in favour of a Scottish Assembly along with Gordon Brown. He left the party in 1989 and joined the SNP. In 1991 he also joined Plaid Cymru. In 2004, Professor Harvie was SPD candidate for the Tübingen Kreistag, but was not elected. Professor Harvie is currently working on a book called Broon's Britain, while A Floating Commonwealth: Technology, Politics and Culture on the Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930 is due to be published later this year.

Posted 6 May 2007

Scottish Region News.

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