Heather McRobie

Heather Katharine McRobie, also known professionally as Heather Allansdottir,[1] is a British-Australian[2] writer and professor at Bifröst University in Iceland. [3]

Biography

She studied Modern History and Politics at Oxford University before going on to pursue further studies at the University of Sarajevo and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her move from Oxford to Montreal, aged 22, was allegedly inspired by her love of the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen[4].

During her time as an undergraduate at Oxford University, she was a member of the comedy group The Oxford Imps[5] and published creative writing in the May Anthologies collections in 2006[6] and 2007[7].

She completed a doctorate[8] in comparative constitutional law and human rights law, focused on the Egyptian constitutions since the 2011 Egyptian revolution, at the Oxford Law Faculty. [9] She also worked for human rights NGOs in Jordan and Berlin.

She was allegedly sentenced to life imprisonment in Egypt for her position on the 2013 Raba'a al-Adawiya massacre[10], which she called a "crime against humanity" in her doctoral work.[11] Her doctoral thesis is dedicated to the late Egyptian writer and activist Bassem Sabry.[12]

She held post-doctoral positions in Tel Aviv[13] and Moscow,[14] before moving to Reykjavik to begin her current work[15] on the Icelandic constitution.[16]

McRobie's debut novel Psalm 119 (2008)[17], published when the author was just 23[18], was awarded the Helene du Coudray Prize[19].

Her first non-fiction book, Literary Freedom: a Cultural Right to Literature, came out in 2013[20].

In a wide-ranging journalistic career, she has written for the Guardian, Al Jazeera, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, Salon, Foreign Policy, and The Globe and Mail, among many other publications. She was also an editor of the online outlet openDemocracy. Her non-academic writing has focused on politics, society, conflict and human rights across the UK, the Balkans, Middle East and former Soviet Union.[10]

In an interview in 2018[2], she said she would like to continue writing both fiction and non-fiction.

In 2019, she was a semi-finalist for the Julia Child Fellowship at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school[21].

According to an interview in 2019, she can speak some Arabic, French, Russian, Mandarin and Icelandic but is only fluent in English.[16] Elsewhere she has written satirically on her failure to become proficient in other languages.[22]

As an academic, she currently researches and lectures on constitutional law, human rights law, and the philosophy of law, and is completing a book on comparative constitutional law.[16]

References
  1. "Heather Katharine Allansdottir | University of Oxford - Academia.edu". oxford.academia.edu.
  2. FM, Player. "Dr Heather Katherine McRobie - on a life of perpetual learning" – via player.fm.
  3. "Staff". www.bifrost.is.
  4. "In Which We Winter In Montreal - Home - This Recording". thisrecording.com.
  5. "The Oxford Imps - IRC Improv Wiki". wiki.improvresourcecenter.com.
  6. https://archive.varsity.co.uk/658.pdf
  7. O'Brien, Sean; Tóibín, Colm; Mobbs, Iain; Duric, Cath; Roark, Ryan (23 June 2007). "Mays 15 - 2007". Varsity Publications Ltd – via Google Books.
  8. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/current-students/dphil-student-index/constitutional-law
  9. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo-explore/search?query=any,contains,heather%20mcrobie&tab=local&search_scope=LSCOP_ALL&vid=SOLO&lang=en_US&offset=0
  10. "Podcast 3/23/2017". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  11. Allansdottir, Heather Katharine. "Legal Mosaics: The Post-Mubarak Egyptian Constitutions, their Legal Legacies and Constitutional Heritages" – via www.academia.edu. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7ba47967-2143-4880-a73c-ddeef77cdf82/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=McRobie%2BDPhil%2BMASTER%2BCOPY%2BWITH%2BERRATA.pdf&type_of_work=Thesis
  13. "Visiting Scholars From Previous Years". en-law.tau.ac.il.
  14. "From Revolution to Constitution: Law and politics in Egypt since 2011". 24 March 2017.
  15. "Líta á hvern nemanda sem einstakling en ekki kennitölu". Skessuhorn. 22 August 2019.
  16. "Meet Dr Heather McRobie our new full-time Associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law". Bifrost.is.
  17. "Review: Psalm 119 by Heather McRobie". the Guardian. 29 August 2008.
  18. "PressReader.com - Your favorite newspapers and magazines". www.pressreader.com.
  19. "Helene du Coudray Prize". www.maiapress.com.
  20. "StackPath". www.johnhuntpublishing.com.
  21. "Julia Child Scholarship Semi-Finalists | Le Cordon Bleu London". www.cordonbleu.edu.
  22. "How to screw up in Arabic". Salon. 8 September 2012.
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