Tom Nairn is an expert on globalisation, nationalism, British institutions and Scotland. He is professor of globalisation at the Globalism Research Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His many books include Global Matrix: Nationalism, Globalism and State- terrorism (2005), The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its monarchy (1994) and After Britain (2000).

Recent articles

An OurKingdom essay: As Britain's postal workers vote to strike and the Royal Mail seems doomed, Tom Nairn dissects the servile, postman like nature of those trapped in the British polity and points to a way out

The financial crisis has discredited macho business ways; the cunning of historical progress is at its mysterious work

What should we do with the aliens around us? Do they threaten and contaminate us? The intruders unite us, but only by terrifying us. Can globalisation assert itself positively without re-inventing and segregating its enemies? Tom Nairn finds these questions and more in the soon to be classic SciFi film, District 9

... regarding Kevin Rudd, Social Democracy, and the Melbourne Monthly and Griffith Review 25 debate. Tom Nairn responds to comments made on his recent openDemocracy essay, Down under diary: is it time for Social Democracy?

The Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd sees a revived social democracy as the only terrain on which the "great financial crisis" can be fought and overcome. In assessing his case and the lively debate it has provoked, Tom Nairn argues that this core idea is more widely relevant to the current international search for a politics beyond neo-liberalism.