Personal Chair: Jonathan Scott Hearn
Jonathan Scott Hearn has been made Personal Chair of Political and Historical Sociology.
He is Professor of Political and Historical Sociology in the School of Social & Political Science.
Professor Hearn originally trained as an anthropologist, gaining his undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Bard College, New York, and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the City University of New York.
He began teaching politics and sociology at Edinburgh in 1998, and has concentrated on sociology since 2001.
His interdisciplinary work focuses on theories of power, nationalism and national identity, the nature of liberal society, social evolution and change, Scottish society and politics, and the banking crisis in Scotland.
His research has been supported by the by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust.
Professor Hearn's current project, funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation, investigates the institutionalisation of competition in liberal societies in the modern period.
He is the author of three books, 'Theorizing Power' (Palgrave, 2012), 'Rethinking Nationalism' (Palgrave, 2006) and 'Claiming Scotland' (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), and has published articles in numerous academic journals.
He is a musician, writing and performing in his spare time.