Professor of History
Vice President International Programmes
Contact:
Email: alessid@richmond.ac.uk
School: School of Communications, Arts & Social Sciences
Research centres: International Visual Arts and Cultures and The State Power & Globalisation
About
I was born in Wales to Irish-Welsh and Italian parents, raised in Canada and studied in New Zealand after having been awarded a Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship. I have taught at McMaster University (Canada), St Thomas’s University (Canada), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) and Trinity St David’ University (Wales). I have been a Visiting Professor in the School of Arts at the University of Northampton, a Visiting Professor at Franklin University (Switzerland), a Research Associate for the Centre for Fascist/Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies, Teesside University (UK), and am a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis for the Radical Right (CARR). I have been invited to give numerous lectures throughout the world and am also a fellow of Royal Historical Society, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and a former Vice Chair of the New Zealand Studies Association.I am a postcolonial, political and cultural historian of imperialism with additional interests in the history of the extreme right. I am currently working on an ambitious political history investigating definitions of empire and diverse methods of empire formation. This includes the buying and renting of imperial territory as a means of expansion and the role of non-state actors, such as filibusters, corporate players and religious organisations, in the imperial process. I am also working on a project examining the relationship between the extreme right and the occult, heathenism and Satanism. My interests are hiking, fencing and canoeing, and in 2018 I made a successful attempt, with my friend and colleague Mark Horne, to obtain a Guinness World Record for canoeing the length of the River Thames in a double canoe.
Research interests
Qualifications
Teaching & learning
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Engagement and knowledge exchange
