Programme Team

Alistair McCleery

Alistair McCleery is Professor of Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University where he is also Director of the Scottish Centre for the Book within which Postgraduate Publishing is based. With a real enthusiasm and passion for books and reading, Alistair believes that books are key instruments not only in personal development but also in social mobility and inclusion. To this end, his own research and teaching has focussed upon ensuring the robustness of our reading culture and the availability of good books at affordable prices to service it. He has been involved in the promotion of reading development and in the analysis of best models for publishing. In particular, he has a strong commitment to the distinctiveness of the cultural heritage of the nations and regions of the UK, stemming from his Ulster background and long-term Scottish residence.

Email: a.mccleery@napier.ac.uk

Avril Gray

Avril is Programme Leader for Postgraduate Publishing and lectures on publishing to both Undergraduate and Postgraduate Publishing students. Prior to joining Edinburgh Napier, Avril was Managing Director of Scottish Cultural Press and Scottish Children’s Press. Having worked in a variety of publishing roles before that, she has over 15 years’ professional experience in the industry. During this time she has developed very close links with the publishing industry, and the Postgraduate Publishing Placement module which she recently introduced utilises these contacts to provide students with a publishing placement. Considering publishing in its broadest sense, she leads a publishing studies programme that embraces books and ebooks, manga and monographs, zines, ezines and magazines, and in 2011 she was invited to join the judging panel of the annual PPA Scotland School Magazine Awards. Research interests include management in publishing and, more recently, the reading habits of teenagers in Scotland. Avril is Secretary of UK APE and member of the Scottish Centre for the Book.

Email: a.gray@napier.ac.uk

Derek Allan

Derek is Programme Leader BA (Hons) Publishing and Depute Programme Leader Postgraduate Publishing. Derek is module leader for our new Magazine Publishing module which recently saw the launch of our postgraduate publishing Buzz magazine.

He has previously worked for De La Rue in the graphic arts area of colour reproduction and has been lecturing on publishing/production since 1990. Over that time he has also been involved in a wide range of consultancy and short course provision including: The Scotsman newspaper, set up of training institute Mauritius, Landmark Press, Adobe/Sykes, Tesco Finance and Quark. He runs CPD provision in image reproduction and page layout for commercial businesses.Derek maintains close links with local printers and repro companies, as well as manufacturers and software providers, such as Heidelberg, Fuiji graphic-systems and Quark. Derek’s particular area of expertise is in colour reproduction, digital imaging and on demand publishing.

Email: de.allan@napier.ac.uk

Dave McCluskey

Dave tutors across a number of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, teaching Journalism, Communication and Design students as well as Postgraduate Publishing students. He teaches on our Publishing in Practice modules in trimesters 1 and 2.

Dave is a knowledgeable and innovative tutor, whose particular expertise in industry-specific software – such as Indesign and QuarkXPress – provides Publishing students with the indepth and up-to-date skills demanded by the industry. Dave also runs design courses for industry professionals and has been involved in a wide range of consultancy and short course provision, such as the recent Intensive Indesign Workshop for members of Publishing Scotland.

Email: d.mccluskey@napier.ac.uk

James McCall

James McCall has taught and lectured in international publishing in various universities. He has been a director of publishing companies in the UK and Africa and now specialises in educational textbook policy in Europe and the third world.

He has worked in over thirty countries on donor-funded publishing projects and has been textbook adviser to a number of Ministries of Education in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and South East Asia. He is also Secretary of the International Association for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media (IARTEM), Publications Convener of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS) and a member of the panel of judges for the Best European Schoolbook Awards.

Email: j.mccall@napier.ac.uk

Dr Alistair Duff

Dr Alistair Duff leads the Postgraduate Dissertation module for our MSc Publishing students. Alistair is interested in the information society and freedom of information, and he also covers research-oriented modules on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in journalism and publishing, as well as supervising research students.

With a background in philosophy (London, Glasgow) and information (Strathclyde, Napier), he has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Zurich and a visiting fellow at Oxford, and is currently an external examiner at City University, London, and the Lincoln School of Journalism. He has published journal articles, reviews and encyclopedia entries, and is now also completing a second research monograph: “Towards a Normative Theory of the Information Society”.

James Mavor

James Mavor is the Programme Leader for MA Screenwriting and he delivers the From Script to Screen module which our Postgraduate Publishing students can select in trimester 2. James is a working scriptwriter with wide experience and number of credits, awards and award-nominations in television, film, theatre, radio, opera and prose. Credits include television series Doctor Finlay, The Bill and Monarch of the Glen. Original dramas for television include Split Second (2000) starring Clive Owen for BBC One, and Reichenbach Falls (2007), an adaptation of an Ian Rankin short story for BBC Four. A short story, Brittle, was published in Work – New Scottish Writing 2007 (Polygon). Current work includes Disco, a short film being made in collaboration with Screen Academy staff and students. A feature film Sinner, is an adaptation of The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg which James is co-writing with Ian Rankin. The script is in development with the UK Film Council and Scottish Screen.

Mark Grindle

Mark is Module Leader for Interactive Media – an option for Postgraduate Publishing students in trimester 2. Mark has written, script edited, produced and executive produced over 200 hours of film and television in the US and UK. He trained at the UCLA Graduate Screenwriting programme before working in development for Columbia Pictures. He was executive producer on the Scottish Screen/Scottish Television BAFTA-nominated and RTS award-winning New Found Land drama series.

Susan Laing

Susan is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Head of Entrepreneurship, School of Management and Law. She is module leader for the New Venture Planning module which our MSc Publishing students can select in trimester 2. Susan has developed a ‘pracademic’ philosophy in the delivery of Centre teaching which requires all of the team to have both academic qualifications and business experience. She believes this is what makes the Napier entrepreneurship experience so valuable to students.

Susan is a visiting lecturer at HAW Hamburg and ECUST (East China University of Science and Technology), Shanghai. At HAW Hamburg she created and delivers the European Entrepreneurship Exchange, and at ECUST she lectures on the MBA programme and is supporting them to develop their own Centre for Entrepreneurship. Susan has delivered conference papers in UK, Germany and China on ‘Innovative approaches to teaching entrepreneurship’ and is a contributing author in ‘Entrepreneurship; An International Perspective’.

She is equally comfortable in the business community having links with the Entrepreneurial Exchange, Scottish Enterprise, Princes Scottish Youth Business Trust, Institute of Directors, and the Federation of Small Businesses. Susan continues to run her own business and chairs the Board of EngineerAid a registered charity.

Stephanie Craighill

Stephanie is a PhD student studying the topical subject: Globalization of the European Market in Fiction. She graduated from Edinburgh Napier University in 2007 with a First Class Honours in Publishing Media and was awarded the John Wiley & Sons Book Prize. After a work experience placement at Canongate Books in Edinburgh, Stephanie was employed by Wiley-Blackwell as a Production Assistant. In Sept 2008 we were delighted to see her return to Edinburgh Napier and begin a part-time MRes, which she funded by setting up her own freelance copy-editing and proofreading business. Her MRes was entitled: The Influence of Duality and Poe’s Notion of the ‘Bi-Part Soul’ on the Genesis of Detective Fiction in the Nineteenth-Century, and on its completion she was awarded a Carnegie Scholarship to enable her to continue her studies to PhD level.

Stephanie’s research will contribute valuable insights into the operations of the European marketplace for fiction. Ultimately, findings will be beneficial to knowledge exchange with minority cultures, the international cultural economy, publishers, authors and agents.

Email: s.craighill@napier.ac.uk

Rennie Tu

Rennie is a postgraduate research student who graduated from MSc Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University in 2005; his dissertation was entitled “Rights Business in China”. Since then, he has enjoyed a spell as a freelance publishing advisor — co-founding a small publishing house, Edinburgh Chinese Publishing, and undertaking consultancy work for Chinese publishers as well as his fellow Chinese students.

His PhD research focuses on publishing cooperation between Britain and China with special reference to Scotland. The research will examine how important this co-operation has been in helping grow a vibrant publishing culture in China, and how increasingly important strengthening Sino-Scottish publishing links will become in raising the profile and understanding of Scotland in China (and vice versa) to achieve the mutual benefit of both nations.

Rennie has also recently been appointed as International Student Mentor which means that international students on the Postgraduate Publishing programme now have a warm and friendly individual to guide and support them with living and studying in Edinburgh.

Email: r.tu@napier.ac.uk

Fellowships

A programme of visiting non-stipendiary fellowships has been established by Scottish Centre for the Book (SCOB) in collaboration with other institutions. These visiting fellowships are offered to those who have sabbatical leave from other institutions, and who wish to come to Edinburgh to research into areas of relevance to the work of SCOB. Our Postgraduate Publishing programmes benefit from the expertise and research of these academics from around the world and this year we are delighted to welcome Dr Noel Waite from New Zealand.

2009-10

Noel Waite – Leverhulme Fellowship

Dr Noel Waite is a Senior Lecturer in Design Studies at Otago University, in Edinburgh’s sister city, Dunedin, New Zealand.

During 2010, he is a Leverhulme Research Fellow in the Scottish Centre for the Book. While based at Edinburgh Napier University’s Craighouse campus he will be writing a chapter in a forthcoming History of Book Culture in New Zealand on the period 1890-1930, and researching the educational publishing of Scottish firm Thomas Nelson & Sons to understand the imperial relationship with New Zealand’s Whitcombe & Tombs. In addition, he will research interdisciplinary Design research and education in the United Kingdom.

2007-8

Visiting Fellow Dr Ann Steiner (Lund University, Sweden)

Lecturer and research fellow in literature. Ann’s publications include a book on subscription book clubs in Sweden during the 1970s, articles on the international distribution of books via the internet, as well as articles for the International Journal of the Book.

We are currently persuading the rest of the team to upload their details – watch this space!!

Consultants, Guest Lecturers and Former Staff

Lorraine Fannin

Lorraine Fannin and Aly Barr

Lorraine Fannin was Director of the Scottish Publishers Association and CEO of its successor organisation, Publishing Scotland from 1987 – 2008. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland and of Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature. She was formerly a member of the British Council Publishers Advisory Committee, the Publishing Qualifications Board and the Institute of Publishing Advisory Board.

Lorraine joined the Scottish Centre for the Book at Edinburgh Napier University in 2009, working on Creativity and Rights. We are proud to have Lorraine as a Consultant and Guest Lecturer on our Publishing Programme.

Marion Sinclair

Marion Sinclair is the current Chief Executive of Publishing Scotland. She has a background of 20 years in Publishing as Editorial Director of a literary press. Marion has incredibly strong links with Edinburgh Napier University, having been the Programme Leader and Lecturer on our MSc Publishing programme. Marion frequently visits us to give talks, to listen to student presentations and to catch up with all that is going on!

Find out more about our Guest Speakers…