Paul Fraser Shanks

Paul Shanks was part of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies (RIISS), Aberdeen. He is primarily interested in overlaps in twentieth-century Scottish, Irish and European writing (particularly works that might broadly be considered as modernist and/or postmodernist in texture). His thesis, completed in 2007, focuses on James Kelman's fiction, placing emphasis on formal and thematic affinities that his writing shares with the works of Franz Kafka, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. He has also published articles on Kelman, Joyce, Janice Galloway and Alexander Trocchi and is currently completing a monograph on Beckett (which will be published by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies).