Dr. Alan Finlayson

MA (Cantab), PhD (Belfast)
Reader in Politics

Office: 029
Email:
Phone: 4290

Career Biography
Alan specialises in the study of political theory, British politics, ideology and mass culture. After studying at Cambridge he worked at Queen’s in Belfast for several years before joining the Department in Swansea in 2000.

Research
Alan’s research interests encompass political theory, media and British Politics as well as some aspects of the theory and method of political analysis. His publications have appeared in a wide variety of journals including Nations and Nationalism, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Economy and Society and Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. He has authored numerous book chapters and also co-edited Politics and Poststructuralism: An Introduction, edited Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader and Guide and wrote the book Making Sense of New Labour. He is currently mostly concerned with theories of rhetoric and the ways in which they might be used to analyse political ideas and arguments in a world of electronic media.

Alan is also convenor of the PSA specialist group for poststructuralist philosophy and radical politics. If you want to know his views on New Labour’s social policy you can hear some of them, as presented to a conference in Montreal, here. And for his views on the Europe question, go here.

Teaching
Alan teaches about the politics of contemporary media (film, newspapers, television and internet) for the Level 1 module Watching Them, Watching Us: Politics, Media and Culture. He also lectures on Marxism, theories of class politics and multiculturalism for the Level 2 module Class, Nation, Gender and Politics, supervises Level 3 Researching Politics topics concerned with the contemporary Labour Party and the Northern Irish peace process and at MA level teaches about key Conceptual Issues in the Theory and Method of the Social Sciences.

Alan has supervised and examined Masters and Doctoral thesis on a range of subjects including: Derrida and political philosophy, Marxist theories of aesthetics literature and culture, media and middle eastern politics, cinema (European and Middle Eastern), new Labour. He is willing and able to supervise on these topics and others that fall within the general categories of theories of language and politics, poststructuralism and political theory, theories of discourse and ideology, media, non-positivist methods of political analysis and so forth.