Want fewer ads?

Professor Christopher Harvie (born September 21, 1944, Motherwell) is a Scottish historian and a Scottish National Party politician. He is currently a Member of the Scottish Parliament for Mid Scotland and Fife. Before his election, he was Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Harvie grew up in the Borders village of St Boswells and was educated at Kelso High School and the Royal High School. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1966 with a First Class Honours M.A. in History. He received his PhD from Edinburgh in 1972 for a thesis on university liberalism and democracy, 1860-1886.

As a historian, Harvie was the Shaw-Macfie Lang Fellow and a tutor at Edinburgh University 1966-1969. He joined the Open University in 1969 as a history lecturer, and from 1978 he was a senior lecturer in history. In 1980, Harvie was appointed Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen. He is the author of several books on topics including Scottish history, nationalism, North Sea oil, the British political novel and European regionalisation.

Harvie was formerly a member of the Labour Party. He co-wrote a pamphlet in favour of the Scottish Assembly along with Gordon Brown in 1979, and co-edited a history of Labour politics in Scotland. In 1988 he left the Labour Party for the SNP.

He is Honorary President of the Scottish Association for Public Transport and holds honorary chairs at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of Strathclyde. He also writes for Guardian Unlimited's online 'comment is free' site, and he is a contributor to the Scottish Review of Books.

He was elected during the 2007 election for the Mid Scotland and Fife region. He serves on the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee.[1]

Harvie won the Free Spirit of the Year award at The Herald newspaper's 2008 Scottish Politician of the Year awards.

Chris Harvie has announced he plans to retire as an MSP at the 2011 election.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Christopher Harvie", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0