Johnny Rodger is a writer, critic, and Professor of Urban Literature at the Glasgow School of Art. He has published several books of fiction –including Redundant (1998), g haun(s) Q (1996), and The Auricle (1995)-- and critical works like the recent Tartan Pimps: Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher and the New Scotland (2010), Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century (2009), The Red Cockatoo: James Kelman and the Art of Commitment(2011), and the monograph Gillespie, Kidd & Coia 1956-87 (2007).  His latest publication is The Hero Building: An Architecture of Scottish National Identity. His research aims at the opening of a new area of cross disciplinary enquiry which brings together literary analysis with the critical techniques of the political and social sciences to examine the spaces inhabited by society, and designed by artists, architects and urbanists.

This field of enquiry ranges from his book Contemporary Glasgow (1999) about architecture and urban environments, to the monograph on influential Glaswegian architects Gillespie, Kidd & Coia; through to the work on Robert Burns and how the culture represents his significance in space by the construction of monuments; and on to the study of the pay-in from writers in Scotland to the form of devolved politics and even the shape of the devolved parliament itself (see Tartan Pimps and the recent James Kelman work). From thence it moves further still to encompass collaborations in music theatre which research movement and relationships organised by the word through space, such that all his work finds coherence in the importance of the word as an ethical and moral fundament in the Scottish polity.