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Clair Wills

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Clair Wills
Academic background
Alma materSomerville College, Oxford
Academic work
DisciplineCultural studies
Sub-discipline
Institutions
Notable worksThat Neutral Island (2007)
Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain (2017)

Clair Wills, FBA, HonMRIA, is a British academic specialising in 20th-century British and Irish cultural history and literature. Since 2019, she has been King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.[1] After studying at the Somerville College, Oxford, she taught at the University of Essex and Queen Mary University of London. She was then Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Chair of Irish Letters at Princeton University from 2015 to 2019, before moving to Cambridge.[2][3][4]

Honours

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In 2016, Wills was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (HonMRIA).[1][5] In July 2020, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[6]

In 2008, Wills was awarded the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for her book That Neutral Island (2007).[7] In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for her book Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain (2017).[8]

Selected works

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  • Improprieties: politics and sexuality in Northern Irish poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993. ISBN 978-0198112686.
  • Reading Paul Muldoon. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe. 1998. ISBN 978-1852243470.
  • That Neutral Island: A cultural history of Ireland during the Second World War. London: Faber. 2007. ISBN 978-0571221059.
  • Dublin 1916: the siege of the GPO. London: Profile Books. 2009. ISBN 978-1846680533.
  • The Best Are Leaving: emigration and post-war Irish culture. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 2015. ISBN 978-1107048409.
  • Lovers and Strangers: an immigrant history of post-war Britain. London: Allen Lane. 2017. ISBN 978-1846147166.
  • Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother's Secrets. London: Allen Lane. 2024. ISBN 9780241640951.

References

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  1. ^ a b "Professor Clair Wills". Murray Edwards College. University of Cambridge. 3 September 2019. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  2. ^ "Professor Clair Wills FBA". The British Academy. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  3. ^ "Clair Wills". Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Columbia University. 2020. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  4. ^ "New Chair of Princeton's Fund for Irish Studies Announces 2015-16 Series | Town Topics". Town Topics. 3 September 2015. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  5. ^ "Professor Clair Wills inducted into the Royal Irish Academy". Department of English. The Trustees of Princeton University. May 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  6. ^ "The British Academy welcomes 86 new Fellows from across the humanities and social sciences". The British Academy. 24 July 2020. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  7. ^ "PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize". English Pen. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  8. ^ "Orwell Prize 2018 Shortlists Revealed". The Orwell Foundation. 18 May 2018. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
Academic offices
Preceded by King Edward VII Professor of English Literature
University of Cambridge

2019 to present
Incumbent