Dr Simon Brooks
Dr Simon Brooks is a Lecturer in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University. His work explores tensions between conservatism and liberalism, as they affect literature, politics and the history of ideas in minority language communities.
In 2004, he used this perspective in his volume, O Dan Lygaid y Gestapo, to discuss the inheritance of Enlightenment thought in late 19th and 20th century Wales, and its impact on Welsh literary theory and criticism. A few years earlier he had been prominent in public policy debate about the future of Welsh-speaking communities. The debate raised the difficulty that attempts by minority communities to resist majority assimilation with communitarian counter-measures can undermine liberal concepts of openness.
In response to this problem, much of his current work explores multiculturalism and ethnic difference in the context of a minority language community. Welsh-language literature provides the discursive evidence. He hopes to draw some theoretical conclusions on how ‘conservative’ survival strategies for a minority language community might be reconciled with a ‘liberal’ desire to respect others.
