Short resumé

Christopher Harvie was born in Motherwell on 21 September 1944. His father was a schoolteacher and he grew up in the border village of St Boswells, where the family lived until 1958. Thereafter he attended the Royal High School and University of Edinburgh, graduating with First Class Honours in History in 1966. His Ph.D. on academic liberalism in Victorian Britain followed in July 1972.

He joined the Open University as one of its first staff members in 1969, pioneering distance learning in history with Arthur Marwick. While at the Open University he produced his first work on Scottish History, Scotland and Nationalism, followed in 1981 by the altogether less optimistic No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland since 1914.

In 1980 he was appointed Professor of British Studies at Tübingen University, Germany. He also directed the British regional studies course of Tübingen's International Economics faculty,becoming Professor Emeritus in autumn 2007. He holds honorary chairs at Aberystwyth and Strathclyde Universities.

His publications include Fool's Gold: the Story of North Sea Oil (1994), The Road to Home Rule (with Peter Jones, 2000), and Scotland, a Short History (2002). Deep-Fried Hillman Imp: Scotland's Transport (2001) led to him being made President of the Scottish Association for Public Transport. Floating Commonwealth: Politics, Technology and Culture on Britain’s Atlantic Coast, 1860-1930, will be published in 2008.

He was married to Virginia Roundell from 1980 until her death on 26 February 2005. Their daughter Alison was born in 1982.

Chris, who describes himself as a civic nationalist and greenish republican, left the Labour Party for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in 1988. In 2006 he was approached by Alex Salmond to stand for the SNP in the 2007 Holyrood elections, and was returned as List Member for Mid-Scotland and Fife. He serves as Parliamentary Liaison Officer to the First Minister, covering the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee of which he is a member.