Team

Arthur Aughey is Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a former member of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council and the British Council (Northern Ireland Committee). He has published widely on Northern Ireland politics, British Conservatism and constitutional change in the United Kingdom . His recent publications include Nationalism Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State (Pluto Press 2001), Northern Ireland Politics: After the Belfast Agreement (Routledge 2005) and The Politics of Englishness (MUP 2007). He is also writing jointly with John Oakland a text for international students on Irish Civilisation which will be published in 2009. Currently he is engaged in a major study, coordinated by the Constitution Unit at University College London, which is exploring the constitutional futures of the United Kingdom until 2017. He is also involved in a collaborative project looking at the utility for British public life of the literature in Canada on inter-culturalism funded by a grant from the Canadian High Commission in London.

Christine Berberich is Lecturer in 19th & 20th-Century English and European Literature at the University. Her doctoral dissertation, written at the University of York, was dedicated to a particularly English social and cultural phenomenon – that of the gentleman. Her investigation into gentlemanliness in modern literature, The Image of the English Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature: Englishness and Nostalgia will be published by Ashgate in March 2008. She has published several articles and book chapters on, among others, (literary) Englishness, identity constructions, George Orwell, Julian Barnes and Ford Madox Ford. She is currently working on a joint project with Arthur Aughey on conversations on English National Identity, as well as an article-length study of postmodern constructions of Englishness(es) in James Hawes’ 2005 novel Speak for England. Her next book-length project will focus on literary presentations of English fascism.

Gareth Young is a scientist by trade but his passion is England. He is an active campaigner for an English Parliament and is an outspoken critic of the Government’s asymmetric devolution. He lives with his Canadian wife in the Sussex Downs.