Professor Val McDermid

Visiting Professor of Scottish Studies and Crime Fiction

Professor McDermid is Visiting Professor of Scottish Studies and Crime Fiction. She is one of the most distinguished crime writers in the English language. Her novels have been translated into forty languages and have sold over fifteen million copies.

In 2010 she received the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. She is a previous winner of the LA Times Book Prize, the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and the Grand Prix des Romans d'Adventure. She has won an Anthony Award in both the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories.

Professor McDermid makes regular appearances on BBC's Question Time, and led the Scottish team to victory in Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz. She holds honorary degrees from the universities of Sunderland, Northampton, Dundee and Bath Spa. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford.

For each of the three years 2019-2021, Professor McDermid will spend eight weeks a year in Dunedin, where she will be attached to the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies. Along with mentoring postgraduate students, she will contribute to undergraduate courses in Scottish Studies, crime fiction and creative writing, and give a number of public lectures and readings.