Inaugural Duncan Tanner memorial lecture

The first Duncan Tanner memorial lecture and round-table debate on political change took place on Wednesday 11 February. The lecture, delivered by Professor Zhanpeng Wang of Beijing Foreign University on the theme of ‘Devolution in the aftermath of the Scottish referendum: some observations from Chinese scholars’ was followed by a lively round-table debate on the implications of the Scottish referendum on Wales and the rest of the UK. 

The lecture took place on the fifth anniversary of Professor Tanner’s death. Duncan Tanner was Professor of History at Bangor University and was Director of the University’s Welsh Institute for Social and Cultural Affairs (WISCA). He also led a major ESRC funded project on the history of Welsh devolution. 

Dr Andrew Edwards, Dean of Arts and Humanities at Bangor said ‘we had been thinking for some time of organising an annual lecture in Duncan’s memory and, given that he made his name researching the theme of political change, Professor Wang’s paper and the debate that followed were both a fitting and timely tribute to his memory and legacy. Duncan would have been delighted to see a room filled with staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students and, had he still been with us, I’m sure he would have had his usual robust, and no doubt controversial, opinions on the issues being debated!’

The Duncan Tanner lecture and debate on political change will take place in February each year. A festschrift in Professor Tanner’s memory is being published later this year by Manchester University Press and work on a posthumous monograph on the Labour Party in the inter-war years is nearing completion. 

Publication date: 25 February 2015