Our distinguished guest speaker for the seminar on 30 January is Prof. Michael Parker (University of Central Lancashire). Prof. Parker will be speaking on ‘“Fallout from the thunder”: Northern Irish Poetry since 9/11’, discussing poems by Sinead Morrissey, Nick Laird and Seamus Heaney.
Michael Parker has been a member of the English Literature team at the University of Central Lancashire since 1999, where he is Research Manager for English Language and Literature. He is a member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a peer reviewer for the Research Council of Norway. He recently published Northern Irish Literature, 1956-2006: The Imprint of History, a work in two volumes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and in 2008, Irish Literature Since 1990: Diverse Voices, a collection of essays which he has co-edited with Scott Brewster, will be appearing from Manchester University Press. In 2006 he became an Advisory Editor for Irish Studies Review and for the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. He is a member of the English Association, IASIL, the British Association for Irish Studies and the Thomas Hardy Association. He has reviewed books and plays for, among others, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The Irish Times. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, and in 2005 was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Ulster’s Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages.
