A Tale of Two Cities

Scouse Doctor

Professor Anthony Grant

My love of linguistics began early when I was a seven-year-old kid growing up with my twin brother and parents in Bradford. I had an unlikely boyhood hero in Morris Swadesh, one of the world’s most eminent and gifted linguistics teachers. His writing really inspired me and I owe a great deal to him – which is why he’s the subject of my inaugural lecture. As I grew older, it entered my mind that I wanted to be a lecturer in linguistics and, later, that I could perhaps one day become a professor. That I’m here in that role now is tremendously gratifying.

My academic road has been long and winding – but always rewarding. I’ve worked all over the country to develop my career and although there have been times when I wasn’t sure where the next step would lead, I’ve always found linguistics deeply fulfilling. I took my first degree in linguistics at theUniversity of York, graduating in 1984, before returning to my home town to complete an MPhil and PhD at the University of Bradford. I came to Edge Hill in 2003 and was appointed a reader in 2006.

I’m determined to bang the drum for linguistics – at Edge Hill and internationally.
I want to encourage an enthusiastic generation of students and get more writing and publishing done. It would be enormously rewarding to get Edge Hill known more widely as the place to come for linguistics expertise. There’s a great deal of potential here and we should be in a strong position to get people coming to us wanting to do PhDs now that we have research degree-awarding powers.

I’m fascinated by the Scouse dialect. Among my main research and writing projects was co-editing and contributing to The Mersey Sound: Liverpool’s Language, People and Places, published in 2007. It’s a collection of articles written by people with Edge Hill links and the chapter that I contributed looks at the Scouse dialect and vocabulary. Interestingly, its development in the 19th Century was less influenced by the influx of Irish people than is often imagined. Liverpool’s dialect owes a huge amount to the city’s role as a great world seaport and the multiple accents and dialects that were imported here from all corners of the globe. 

Professor Grant and his colleague Soeren Wichmann are shortly to contribute
a volume of papers on Swadesh's legacy to Diachronica, the leading historical linguistics journal. This is only the second-ever focused special issue of the journal in its 25-year history.

The Future is History

Professor Mark McGovern

The conflict in Northern Ireland impacted hugely on my understanding of the world. Like many people from the nationalist community, events such as Bloody Sunday in my home town of Derry, and the sense of injustice that it instilled, that people could be shot down by the state in broad daylight and that was covered up, had a massive and lasting effect. This shaped my political understanding – of the North and elsewhere – and drove me towards undertaking the work I have done.

I believe that dealing properly with the past is the only way to future peace in Northern Ireland. Dealing with all of the injustices of the past in a comprehensive way and allowing all victims to be respected equally is, for me, key to creating a society based on a respect for rights and equality in the future. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, my research has concentrated on truth and justice in dealing with the past as part of post-conflict transition.

I have had the privilege of hearing many moving and powerful stories from victims of the conflict. As a member of the Ardoyne Commemoration Project, a four-year community-based research programme, I helped to compile an oral history of the community’s experience of 30 years of war. I collaborated with victims and human rights groups to record the testimonies of some 300 relatives and friends of the 99 victims from the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. I think historical memory plays an important role in the politics of Northern Ireland and this oral tradition continues to be the foundation of my academic work.

I have learned a great deal from visiting other countries that are recovering from their own conflicts. As a result of being engaged in debates on dealing with the past in Northern Ireland, I travelled far and wide exploring how truth and justice issues have been dealt with elsewhere in societies emerging from conflict. These journeys took me on research trips to countries such as Chile, Guatemala and South Africa, as well as to deliver talks in Sri Lanka and the Greensboro Community Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in North Carolina.

Becoming a professor will only increase my passion for the subject of Northern Ireland. On a personal and academic level, I am obviously extremely honoured by the award of my professorship in social and psychological sciences. It gives me an added impetus to help provide leadership in the development of research at the University.