Chik Collins

I worked at the University of the West of Scotland between 1994 and 2019, before leaving to become, from the 1st of September 2019, the Rector (Vce Chancellor) of the University of the Faroe Islands.

I studied Social Science, specialising in Social Theory, at Paisley College of Technology (graduating 1987), and was later sponsored by the Scottish Special Housing Association/Scottish Homes to study for the Postgraduate Diploma in Housing Administration at the University of Stirling (graduating 1991). I returned to the University of Paisley in 1993 to undertake a PhD in Political Sociology, which I completed in 1997 – and published as Language, Ideology and Social Consciousness: Developing a Sociohistorical Approach (Ashgate, 1999).

I worked in the field of social sciences throughout my time at UWS, and became Professor of Applied Social Science and later Assistant Dean for Research and Enterprise in the School of Media, Culture and Society. I also spent a period as Intrim Dean of the same School.

During my years at UWS I became a highly experienced applied social science academic and researcher, with a sustained track record of teaching excellence and collaborative and interdisciplinary research on key social and economic issues. I gained extensive experience of working ‘beyond academia’ with a wide range of organisations across sectors and at different scales.

In 2011-12 I was co-creator of the pioneering UWS-Oxfam Partnership ‘for a more equitable and sustainable Scotland’, which I continued to lead on behalf of UWS until my departure in 2019. In my  collaborative research (with NHS Health Scotland, Glasgow Centre for Population Health and others) over the period since 2008-09, I focused, inter alia, on the public policy causes of the phenomenon of ‘excess mortality’ in contemporary Scotland and Glasgow, and made a substantial contribution to the progress from description to explanation of that phenomenon.

I have published extensively on the economic, social and political development of Scotland in the 20^th Century and beyond, looking at different times at industrial policy, housing and urban policy, community development and regional policy. My earlier work  reflected on the role of language in processes of social change, and  contributed to theoretical discussions relevant to that – in particular by developing a critique of ‘critical discourse analysis’ and developing an alternative ‘cultural-historical’ approach. In the period since 2011, I have published on health inequalities, and have collaborated with others in developing an explanation for the phenomenon of ‘excess mortality’ in contemporary Scotland and Glasgow.

My recent research has focussed principally on health and health inequalities, with a particular focus on the phenomenon of 'excess mortality' in contemporary Scotland and Glasgow, and the role of public policy at various scales - particularly the 'regional' and urban scales - in its causation.