Prof Neville Kirk
Professor of History
Contact Details
Room: Mabel Tylecote Building (Room 302)
Telephone: 0161 247 3918
E-mail: n.kirk@mmu.ac.uk
Background
Brief Professional Biography
Neville Kirk is Professor of Social and Labour History. His recent and current interests embrace the comparative and transnational labour history of Australia, Britain and the USA and global labour history. His publications include The Growth of Working-Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England (1985), Labour and Society in Britain and the USA, 2 vols. (1994), Comrades and Cousins: Globalization Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914 (2003), Custom and Conflict in the Land of the Gael: Ballachulish 1900-1910 (2007). He has recently held Visiting Fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. In 2007 he took up a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellowship at the University of Toronto, Canada. In the past year he has delivered papers at the universities of Toronto and New Brunswick in Canada, the University of Reading in England and most recently at Lochaber College, part of the University of the Highlands and Islands, in Fort William, Scotland. He is about to take up a Visiting Fellowship at the National Europe Centre, the Australian National University. During the summer and autumn of 2008 he will present papers at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, in Dresden and in Chicago. He is on the steering committe of an international research group into 'Labour and Globalization' based at the University of Toronto.
In 1987, I was Visiting Associate Professor of History at the Department of History, Yale University.
In 1997, I became Professor of History at MMU.
In 1998-99, I was Hallsworth Research Fellow at the Manchester International Centre for Labour Studies.
In 1999-2000, I was an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
In 2001, I was Visiting Research Fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences, the Australian National University, Canberra.
In 2004, I was Visiting Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University.
In 2005, I was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Business, the University of Sydney.
In 2007, I took up a Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellowship at the University of Toronto, Canada.
In 2008, I was Visiting Fellow at the National Europe Centre, the Australian National University.
I am a member of the Advisory Boards of Labour History Review, The Society for the Study of Labour History, Labour History and International Labor and Working Class History.
In my time off I do fell running. I am a member of the Bob Graham Twenty-Four Hours Club. I am also a very long-suffering supporter of Manchester City Football Club.
Research Interests
Comparative and Trans-national Research: Britain and Australia. I am working on a research monograph entitled, Ties of Empire: Labour and the Politics of Class, Race, Nation and Empire in Australia and Britain, 1901 to the present.
I am involved with a worldwide group of scholars on a 'Globalizing Labour' project, based at the University of Toronto, Canada, under the direction of Professor Rick Halpern, formerly of UCL.
A Summer Institute in global labour history will be held in Toronto in June 2008.
