Staff

Claire Squires

Claire joined Stirling in 2009 as Director of the Centre for International Publishing and Communication. Her publishing career includes editorial and publicity roles at Hodder and Stoughton General Trade Division, and freelance and consultancy work for a variety of trade and academic publishers.

Claire’s research interests focus on the history of the book and publishing studies in the 20th and 21st centuries, both in the UK and globally. She is co-Volume Editor for the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain Volume 7: The Twentieth Century and Beyond (CUP, in preparation), and is the Associate Editor with responsibility for the Twentieth Century Book in Britain for the Oxford Companion to the Book (OUP, 2010). She has particular interests in contemporary literary publishing, children’s books and publishing, literary prizes, and ghostwriting.

Her books and publications include Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain (Palgrave, 2007), books on Philip Pullman and Zadie Smith, and articles on the contemporary literary marketplace, book awards, children’s publishing, and small nations publishing. She has frequently spoken about her work both in UK and elsewhere including, in recent years, as an invited speaker in Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, and Sweden. She has organised and contributed to public sessions at events including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Aye Write!, the London Book Fair, the Ljubljana Book Fair, and has spoken on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book programme.

From 2009, she has been Director for Publications and Awards for SHARP (the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing). She has been a judge for the Saltire Society Literary Awards (2010-2014), and is a current judge for the Saltire Society Publisher of the Year Award (2013-). In 2015, she was given a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.

View Claire's full profile

Simon Rowberry

Simon joined Stirling in 2015 as Lecturer in Digital Media and Publishing. His interest in publishing stems from documenting the shift in print publishing with the coming of digital culture, as well as emergent forms of digital publication. His research interests include ebooks, the preservation and legacy of born-digital publications, contemporary book history and large-scale datasets of reading. Simon has been invited to talk on the intersection of digital culture and book history at the University of Reading and Society of Indexers Annual Conference and has spoken about the emergence of ebook culture in Lausanne, Seattle and Birmingham. He is a consultant for the AHRC-funded Digital Reading Network. His research into digital readership of Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon has been published in Nabokov Online Journal, Orbit: Writing around Pynchon, and Proceedings of ACM Hypertext. He is currently working on a history of the Kindle from 2007 to 2011.

View Simon's full profile

Frances Sessford

Frances joined the Centre in 2006 as a Teaching Assistant, progressing to Teaching Fellow in 2007. A career change from banking and risk management brought her to Stirling to take the MLitt in Publishing Studies in 1999. Graduating with Distinction, she worked as an editor and copy writer for a local technical publisher for five years.

Frances teaches Editorial Practice and Content Creation, and Skills for Publishing Management, and contributes to other modules including the Publishing Project and Publishing Dynamics. She undertakes a variety of freelance projects and is particularly interested in business aspects of publishing and editing. She is also involved in creative writing, having been short-listed for the 2002 Macallan Prize and appearing in New Writing Scotland.

View Frances' full profile

Scott Russell

Scott has over 20 years’ experience in the printing and publishing industry. Starting as a pre-press operator in the printing industry he progressed through technical support before finally becoming an IT manager at The Herald Group (The Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald). In 2002 he became a freelance trainer and consultant working for clients up and down the country including Guardian newspapers. Scott is an accredited trainer holding the CIPD Certificate in Training Practice and an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor in InDesign, Acrobat and Photoshop. He also manages the Scottish InDesign User Community.

Scott teaches production, design and aspects of digital publishing.

Lesley McIntosh

Lesley is the Postgraduate Administrator at the Graduate Studies Office. She is responsible for both postgraduate taught and research administration within the Department. She deals with all issues concerning postgraduate studies and administration.