Alan Finlayson

Alan Finlayson
Nationality	British
Academic background
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast
Academic work
Main interests	Political science
Notable ideas	Rhetorical political analysis

Alan Finlayson is a British political theorist and political scientist. He is Professor of Political and Social Theory at The University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, having previously taught in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University, and the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen's University Belfast. He is a leading advocate of rhetorical political analysis and of its importance for the study of British politics.

Alan Finlayson has published a number of books on both British politics and political theory, including Making Sense of New Labour, Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader and Guide and Democracy and Pluralism. He also writes articles on British politics from a left-wing perspective for The Guardian and openDemocracy. He has written widely read articles on UK Uncut and on the phenomenon of Blue Labour. His work has been a reference point for other academic research, such as Roffee's study into the arguments used to support the criminalisation of consensual and non-consensual familial sexual activities.

Finlayson is a noted advocate of the development of Rhetorical Political Analysis within British Political Studies. He promotes the close study of political speech and argument on the grounds that this is a way of understanding the history and development of political ideologies. He is responsible for the website British Political Speech which archives political speeches and promotes the study of political oratory in the UK. In 2015 his essay "Proving, Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics" was awarded the Bernard Crick Prize for the best article in the journal Political Quarterly.

Finlayson was convenor of the Post-Structuralism and Radical Politics specialist group of the Political Studies Association from 1999-2009. He is currently Treasurer of the Rhetoric and Politics Specialist Group of the PSA, a member of the Rhetoric Society of America's Internationalization Task Force and of the steering group of the Rhetoric Society of Europe. He is also a Trustee of the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust. and a Director of the left-wing publisher Lawrence and Wishart.

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