Nigel Leask

Nigel James Leask (born 1958) is a Scottish academic publishing on Romantic, Scottish, and Anglo-Indian literature, with special interest on British Empire, Orientalism, and Travel writing. He has been Regius Professor of English language and literature at the University of Glasgow, since 2004.

He won the Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year award in 2010 for his book Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late-18th Century Scotland. He is a fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Centenary Fellow of the English Association.

Early life and education
He was born in 1958 and grew up in Stirlingshire. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge before taking up a position of Reader in Romantic literature at Cambridge University. He is married and has two daughters.

Career
In 2004, he was appointed to Regius chair of English language and literature at University of Glasgow, and is Head of the School of Critical Studies, currently from 1 August 2010. He also held teaching appointments at the University of Bologna, Italy; University of Dundee, Scotland; and a visiting professorship at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City. He has lectured widely in India, Europe, and Americas.

He published The Politics of Imagination in Coleridge’s Critical Thought, his first book, in 1988; subsequently, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire in 1992, and many others later.

Awards

 * Saltire Award - Scottish Research Book of the Year 2010.