Tutors

 Christiana Aliu

Christiana Aliu is a passionate writer and an MLitt graduate in English Studies and Literature from the University of Dundee. With a growing body of published work, she is the author of two poetry pamphlets, and her poems have been featured in the Black in White Community Collection, The Sun Review (Reader’s Selection), and an American anthology—where she was first published at the age of sixteen. Christiana brings a deep love for language, a sharp editorial eye, and a commitment to inclusive creativity.

Renato Ammannati

Renato studied architecture, urban planning and theology in Rome.  A member of the Vatican Commission for the Preservation of Monuments and Works of Art, he worked in Italy and the Vatican State for a number of years. In 2001 he published his first book: Apocalisse. Le cose che stanno per accadere. Linearita e reversibilita del tempo nell’ Apocalisse di Giovanni, and in 2010, Rivelazione e Storia; both anthropological analyses of the Book of Revelations. Since 2012 Renato has given continuing education classes on Italian culture, history and art at the University of Dundee.

Josephine Jules Andrews

Josephine Jules Andrews is a memoirist and poet, and has taught Life Writing/creative non-fiction at the University of Dundee since 2013.  Born in Dundee, she trained in Anthropology, Geography and Ecology at University College London, Washington University in St Louis, and worked in conservation in Europe, India and Madagascar.  Her students have published widely, and their writing has featured in exhibitions and events including the Dundee Literary Festival in 2014, 2015 and 2016.  In 2017 she won the Dundee University Student-Led Teaching Award for ‘Most Inspirational Teaching’.  She has co-edited and co-designed Dundee Writes magazine since Issue 1.

Antony Black

Antony Black is Emeritus Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Dundee. His published works include a world history of ancient political thought, from prehistory to c.300 CE, a complete history of Islamic political thought, and a comparative study of political thought in the West and in the Muslim-ruled world from the origins to the present, a history and theory of community and recently explored climate change in the context of world history and the challenge it presents today. He is currently working on a global history of political thought up to the present.

Rebecca Brown

Rebecca Brown has worked as a tutor for the universities of Dundee and St Andrews in their courses for adults for the last 12 years or so. Before moving to Scotland, she was a member of the Education Department of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford upon Avon, devising and teaching courses for students from British and overseas universities, often in collaboration with the University of Birmingham and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Mark Cabrelli

After graduating from the University of Dundee in Geography & History and from Strathclyde in Marketing, Mark worked in Virginia, USA for 25 years. An avid historian, his special interest in the American Civil War took him to all of the major sites associated with the War throughout the US. From the killing fields Gettysburg and Antietam to the prison at Andersonville and the Vicksburg siege to the Appomattox courthouse and Ford’s Theater in DC.

Itziar Ferreira Cores

Itziar is a qualified civil engineer and transformational coach. Originally from Northern Spain, she came to Abertay to complete her engineering degree and graduated here in Dundee. After her engineering studies she completed a PGCE in Mathematics with the University of Dundee. After becoming a mother, and recognising her passion for sustainability and the environment within the construction industry, she worked for Tier 1 contractors in the UK for several years.

Most recently, she has been giving back to the community by conducting wellbeing events, volunteering, coaching and creating a social enterprise based around embedding wellbeing at different levels for collective healing.

Sam Dobbie

Sam Dobbie graduated with a PhD in History from the University of Glasgow. Her specialism is women’s political agency in eighteenth-century revolutionary Paris. However, she also has interests in France in the long nineteenth-century more broadly. She has worked as a PhD student tutor at the University of Glasgow, teaching on courses such as History 2A: The Social and Cultural History of Europe, 1500-2000, France: Nation, Revolution and Empire, 1789-1914 and Becoming an Historian. She has also taught on the Glasgow Caledonian module The Rise of Western Societies, 1789-1914 and provided temporary teaching cover for the University of Exeter on France and Empire, 1756-1830.

Susan Haigh

Susan Haigh is an award-winning short story writer, a graduate of M.Litt course in Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee. Her work has appeared in Mslexia, New Writing Dundee, Northwords Now, Gutter, New Short Stories (Willesden Herald), The Scottish Arts Trust Anthology (forthcoming) and a number of other journals and anthologies. She also reviews fiction and poetry for The Short Review, The New Short Review and Dundee University Review of the Arts.

Jill Harrison

Jill Harrison is an art historian and Research Associate at the Open University. She leads the Trinity Network which she founded in 2018 with the aim of studying all aspects of the Trinity Apse in Edinburgh and the Adornes Network, focusing on the life and legacy of Anselm Adornes.  She is co-editing and contributing to two books, Reviving the Trinity: Networks and Materialities in Scotland and Europe, 1400 -1600 and Anselm Adornes: Travel, Trade and Cultural Exchange, Intellectual Networks in Scotland, Bruges and Jerusalem. She is the recipient of an OEC Jean Guild Award for a 2- year project to produce a survey of the Trinity stones dispersed over Edinburgh following the demolition of the building in 1848. 

Joanne Hynie

Joanne is a former Principal Teacher of Modern Languages who taught French, German and Spanish. Since 2016, she has taught French to both undergraduates and mature students at Dundee University. Her passion for connections across languages and cultures has been at the heart of many expeditions, exchanges and trips to France, Europe and beyond. She holds a postgraduate diploma in special needs in education and a PhD in Education and Social Justice. Joanne also has a passion for the language of music, has studied jazz piano at the University of St Andrews, and has taught piano for many years.

Donald Innes

Donald is a retired Principal Teacher of History whose enthusiasm for his subject and teaching continues.  Focusing this short course on Hitler’s Germany, a topic he taught with both Higher and Advanced Higher students, he’ll provide appropriate artefacts from the period to illustrate the discussions and suggest further reading.

Sandra Ireland

Sandra Ireland is an award-winning poet and novelist from Carnoustie, Angus. In 2017, she won the Scottish Association of Writers’ Dorothy Dunbar Trophy for Poetry, and has been published in Seagate III, Furies and other anthologies. Her debut novel Beneath the Skin was published by Polygon. Sandra is Writer-in-Residence at Barry Mill, Angus.

Andy Jackson

Andy Jackson is a writer with four collections of poetry, and also editor of more than a dozen anthologies. He is a former Makar to the Federation of Writers Scotland and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. He has been involved in many poetry projects over nearly 20 years and is co-editor of the magazine Poetry Scotland.

Matthew Jarron

Matthew is Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee, looking after a collection of over 30,000 objects, artworks and specimens and running the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, the Tayside Medical History Museum and the exhibition programme in the Tower Foyer & Lamb Galleries. He also has a lifelong passion for cinema and has taught film history evening classes at the University since 2001.

Brian Kelly

Brian was formerly City Astronomer for Dundee at the Mills Observatory.

A graduate of Edinburgh University, he joined the public education team at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh in 1985 before moving to the Mills Observatory in Dundee in 1990.  At the Mills, Brian introduced thousands of visitors to the night sky through public observing sessions and planetary shows, and provided regular astronomy features for the Courier and Radio Tay.

Brian continues to give regular talks and lectures on various aspects of astronomy and space science and likes to spend clear nights with a telescope, binoculars or just the eye alone, exploring the universe for himself.

Jo Chapman Campbell

Jo is an art historian, artist and author.  She taught for many years at Edinburgh University.

 

 Roddie McKenzie

Dr Roddie McKenzie was an assistant professor in immunology at the University of Toronto, a senior non-clinical lecturer in dermatology at the University of Edinburgh and spent 25 years in research, mainly on the molecular biology and immunology of skin diseases. He has taught science to further education students and to undergraduate and postgraduate students in virology, immunology, genetics and  genomics. His work has been published widely.

Roddie worked in the bio-technology industry and has an MBA. A registered practitioner with the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, he continues to work as a counsellor, which he has done for fifteen years. He holds a postgraduate diploma in counselling and qualified as an alcohol counsellor.

Roddie’s other interests include creative writing, hillwalking and painting.

Ken Nisbet

Ken Nisbet has been involved in family history research for over 40 years and is currently Secretary of the Scottish Genealogy Society and the Scottish Association of Family History Societies. He has been a member of the Scotland’s Family History Centre User Group since its inception. He is the resident expert on Scottish Ancestral Records Podcasts and does talks to many of Scotland’s Family History Societies. Through the Scottish Genealogy Society he has had published a Roll of Honour for Nairnshire 1914-1921, and a History of 2nd Battalion 78th Foot 1804-1816. 

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts has taught literature and related subjects at Dundee University since 1993, having previously been a lecturer at London University. He is currently a Research Professor of Modern Literature in the School of Humanities. His teaching and research has been in modernist fiction and poetry, contemporary British and Irish poetry, literature and science, and literature and visual culture. As well as the English MA and MLitt, he taught for several years on the MFA Art and Humanities. He was Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded projects, ‘Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition’ (2009-2011), leading a team of researchers in Literature, Psychology and Fine Art from the Universities of Dundee and Kent. His books include Conrad and Masculinity (2000), Poetry and Contemporary Culture (co-edited 2002), Geoffrey Hill (2004), and Strangeness and Power: Essays on the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill (edited, 2020).

Keith Skene

A former ARSA Rhodes Scholar, Dr Keith Skene is an ecologist whose work has taken him to the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. He has taught courses at many universities across Europe, written over 30 papers and four books, the latest of which is Sustainable Economics, Context, Challenges and Opportunities for the 21st Century.  Currently, he is director and founder of the Biosphere Research Institute, an independent, international and multidisciplinary centre for social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Arran Sulley

Arran has been has been a photography enthusiast for the last 40 years and an adult tutor for the last eight . His philosophy as a tutor is quite simple: ‘If you’re not laughing, you’re not learning’. Arran tries to break everything down into its simplest terms and have fun at the same time. He enjoys watching students attain new skills, especially the ‘penny dropping moments’.

Eric Summers

A Falkirk Bairn, Eric Summers is a graduate of Edinburgh University. He worked in the education sector, principally with Angus Council, for more than forty years.  Now retired and resident in Kirriemuir,  he is a founder member of the Kirriemuir Burns and Scottish Literature Society and the Strathmore Speakers Club. He is also secretary of the Aberdeen Dickens Club, the only branch of the Dickens Fellowship in Scotland. It hosted the international conference of the Fellowship in 2016. He organised the annual conference of the Eagle Society in Dundee in 2019, only the second time it has been held in Scotland. He’s a season ticket holder at Tannadice, but retains a soft spot for the Bairns.

Knotbrook Taylor

Knotbrook is an Angus-based poet. His first chapbook ‘Beatitudes’ was published in 2007. The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses commissioned his second collection ‘Scottish Lighthouse Poems’ which was published in 2011 and explored the rich history and arcane knowledge related to lighthouses in Scotland.

In 2014 he won the Erbacce international poetry prize for his collection ‘Ping-Pong In The Rain’, a book which explores the juxtaposition of random ideas within a poem and finds connections. Themes include love, death and the film Bladerunner.

In 2022 his book The Year Of The Lark (a personal chronicle of the pandemic) was also published by Erbacce.