Meet our team
Our Literature team is based at Inverness College UHI, Lews Castle College UHI, and Perth College UHI.
In addition, your option modules will be taught from across the Highlands and Islands.
Dr Ian Blyth
Ian is the Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Literature; BA (Hons) History and Literature; BA (Hons) Literature and Criminology; BA (Hons) Literature and Politics; BA (Hons) Literature and Sociology; and BA (Hons) Literature and Theology.
Ian is the Module Leader for Reading Poetry: An Introduction (Level 7); Theories of Literature: An Introduction (Level 7); Romantic Genius: Scottish and European Literature, 1750–1830 (Level 9); Union and Discord: 1707–1815 (Level 9); Nature Writing and Ecology (Level 9); Psychogeography and the City (Level 9); Avant-garde Literature (Level 10); Science Fiction and Fantasy (Level 10); Metafiction: Self-Referential Texts (Level 10); and Dissertation [Literature] (Level 10). Ian is also the Module Leader for Continental Philosophy (Level 9) on the BA (Hons) Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) degree.
Ian’s research interests are primarily in 20th-century and contemporary literature, including science fiction and fantasy, nature writing and psychogeography. He is interested in the representations of AI and animal/corvid intelligence in SF and fantasy and, with Suzanne Raitt (College of William and Mary), was co-editor of the Cambridge edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Dr Anne Frater (Lews Castle College UHI)
Anne is the Module Leader for Introduction to Gaelic Prose (Level 7); Introduction to Gaelic Poetry (Level 8); and Gaoir nam ban: Gaelic women's poetry 1644–1746 (Level 9). Anne is also the Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Gaelic Scotland, and teaches on the BA (Hons) Cànan is cultar na Gàidhlig and BA (Hons) Gàidhlig is Leasachadh degrees.
Anne's research is mainly focused on Gaelic literature and social history. Her second poetry collection, Cridhe Creige (Rock Heart), was published by Acair in 2017.
Dr Mandy Haggith
Lecturer in creative writing and literature at UHI Inverness.
I am a writer and author of 11 books of poetry, novels and non-fiction. I originally studied philosophy and mathematics and I have a PhD in artificial intelligence, from back when that was cutting edge! My four poetry books are mostly nature poems. Four of my five novels are historical: the first, The Last Bear, is set in the Viking era and won the Robin Jenkins Literary Award in 2009. More recently, a trilogy set in the Iron Age has been published - The Walrus Mutterer, The Amber Seeker and The Lyre Dancers. My non-fiction book Paper Trails explores where all the paper we use comes from and I have written freelance for many magazines and newspapers, from Current Archaeology to Pulp and Paper International to the Scottish Review of Books. Hundreds of my poems have been published in magazines and I even have one carved on a totem pole - my poem ‘Resilience’, which was commissioned as Scotland’s poem celebrating the Tree Charter in 2018. In 2013 I was poet in residence at the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh and I am currently poet in residence at Inverewe Garden.
I have spent many years as a forest campaigner and I am greatly interested in links between literature and forestry, in particular the ancient link between writing and trees represented by the Gaelic Tree Alphabet. In general I love blurring the boundaries between literature and other art forms and between arts and sciences.
Dr Lesley Mickel
Lesley is the Module Leader for Literary Discoveries: an Introduction to Prose Fiction (Level 7); Heroic Literature: Epic from Classical to Contemporary (Level 8); Glorious Spangs: Material culture at the early modern court (Level 9); Imagining New Worlds: Renaissance Literature and Thought (Level 9); and Past and Present: Historiography (Level 10). Lesley is also the Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Drama and Performance.
Lesley’s research is currently focussed on the material aspects of Renaissance court culture and this has led to new and innovative work on the representation of Scots in court entertainments at home and abroad. She is working a monograph, and also a larger project incorporating a conference and online hub connecting scholars working on similar topics: Glorious Spangs: Renaissance Court Culture.
Dr Kyle Smith (Perth College UHI)
Kyle is the Module Leader for Travellers in the Wilderness: Literature and Exile (Level 7); Risk Anything! The Modernist Short Story (Level 9); Modern Times: Popular Culture and Modernism (Level 9); Apocalyptic Fictions (Level 10); and Postmodernism and Total War (Level 10).
Kyle’s research interests are in twentieth-century and contemporary literature, and he has published articles on Thomas Pynchon, Genre Fiction, Science Fiction Cinema, and Popular Culture.