Professor Kirstie Blair
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Kirstie Blair holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, and MPhil and DPhil degrees from the University of Oxford. She additionally studied at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar.
Professor Blair joined the University of Stirling in August 2022, arriving from the University of Strathclyde where she was a Chair in English Studies and Head of the School of Humanities from August 2017 to August 2020.
Previous to joining Strathclyde University in 2016, she held an Established Chair in the Division of Literature and Languages at Stirling, and before that she was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow, from 2005 to 2012.
Her research interests largely lie in the fields of Victorian studies and Scottish studies: she has published extensively on Victorian poetry, literature and religion, literature and medicine, newspaper and periodical history, and working-class history, literature and culture. She also teaches, researches and supervises in the fields of children’s literature and fan studies. Her third monograph, Working Verse in Victorian Scotland: Poetry, Press, Community (OUP, 2019), won the Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year and Book of the Year awards. She was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.
Recent work has focused on Scottish and Northern working-class cultures, particularly on the experience of industrial workers, and on nineteenth-century industrial heritage more broadly. From 2018 to 2022 Blair led the AHRC-funded ‘Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace’ project, and she continues to work with many of the museum and archive partners from this project.
Responsibilities
The Dean of Faculty is the senior academic officer of the Faculty, responsible for all aspects of its academic performance. The Head is the accountable manager of all staff within their Faculty, and as such is responsible for the effective management of staff and their performance and for the discharge of all responsibilities and duties devolved to the Faculty. The role is supported by a Faculty Manager who is the primary support role within the Faculty.
The Dean of Faculty contributes to the effective management of the University and represents their Faculty both within and outside the University. They are responsible for effective communications with staff within their Faculty and promote and execute institutional strategies and plans.