Gunn, John Alexander Wilson

Person

Gunn, John Alexander Wilson

1937-

John Alexander Wilson (Jock) Gunn, was born in Quebec City, 17 August 1937. He obtained an Honours B.A. in Politics and History from Queen's University at Kingston in 1959; an M.A. in Political Economy from the University of Toronto, two years later; and a D. Phil. from Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1966.

Jock Gunn joined the Department in 1960 as a lecturer. From 1963-1965 he was a research student at Nuffield College, Oxford; while at Oxford, his studies were directed by John Plamenatz, and the resulting D. Phil thesis was published as Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (1969). Two years later Gunn published Factions No More: Attitudes to Party in Government and Opposition in Eighteenth Century England (1971). Between 1975 and 1983, Gunn served a Head of the Department of Political Studies; during those same years, he was part of a team that edited volumes of the letters of Benjamin Disraeli (Vols. 1 & 2, 1982). His study of eighteenth-century political ideas, Beyond Liberty and Property, was published in 1983; Mark Goldie of Cambridge University remarked in a review that few Political Science departments could "boast a scholar who writes with such historical finesse," while J. G. A. Pocock lauded the book as a groundbreaking study that would force scholars to rethink long-held assumptions about the period. The same can be said of the articles that Gunn published between 1967 and 1990, many of which are now being prepared for re-publication.

By the end of the 1980s Gunn was turning to the study of French political ideas. After taking some years to "retool," Gunn published his first major study in the new field, Queen of the World: Opinion in the Public Life of France from the Renaissance to the Revolution (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995), and was appointed to the Peacock Chair in the same year. From 1995 research was focused on the second major study of French political ideas, "Lessons in Civil Disagreement: Opposition and Party in the French Restoration," now completed by not yet published. The final instalment in the French triptych will be a study of the French contribution to the conception of what constitutes "authentic" government.

In addition to these books, and a succession of seminal articles and incisive review essays, Professor Gunn has made substantial contributions to learning. A supervisor of 14 doctoral dissertations, Gunn is a renowned teacher and moulder of future students of ideas. Queen’s Libraries have also benefited from his influence: since the late 1960s Gunn has guided the development of a collection of some 2500 political pamphlets published in Britain between 1642 and 1840, and has recently been developing a similar collection of French materials. A tireless advocate of scholarly excellence, Professor Gunn has been a credit to Queen’s University, and to the Department of Political Studies.

Dr. Gunn was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1983. He retired in 2001 as the Sir Edward Peacock Professor of Political Studies, at Queen’s University.

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