HWS News
11 March 2026 • Faculty Dunn Authors Book on 'Inflammable Material'
International Relations professor explores the impact of Stiff Little Fingers’ 1979 punk album in Northern Ireland.
Professor of International Relations Kevin Dunn examines the cultural and political impact of Stiff Little Fingers’ groundbreaking 1979 punk album Inflammable Material in a new book for Bloomsbury’s acclaimed 33 ⅓ series.
Releasing March 19, Dunn’s book explores how the Northern Irish band’s debut album became both a product of, and response to, The Troubles, the decades-long period of political violence in Northern Ireland that claimed more than 3,500 lives between the 1960s and 1990s. Learn more and preorder here.
The book additionally explores the band's complicated and controversial relationship with the Belfast punk scene, a scene that actively defied violent social divisions to create important non-sectarian spaces through which an “Alternative Ulster," one of the band’s hit songs that imagines a prosperous future, was put into practice.
“Belfast punks like Stiff Little Fingers created important non-sectarian spaces in which social networks were built, alternative ways of being were imagined and campaigns of political and social activism were realized, eventually helping make the peace process a reality,” says Dunn.
The 33 ⅓ book series covers specific albums and their influence alike, ranging from different decades and different genres.
Dunn has written a wide-ranging body of scholarship examining international relations theory, African politics and punk rock around the world. His research focuses predominantly on the African Great Lakes Region (Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Tanzania) and issues in that region concerning security, development, regionalization/globalization and international relations. He is the author of nearly a dozen books, most recently Vicious is My Middle Name, a 2023 Whirlpool Book Award winner and a finalist for Juvenile Fiction in the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. Other books he’s written include Inside African Politics (second edition, 2019), Africa’s Insurgents: Navigating an Evolving Landscape (2017, co-edited with Morten Bas) and Global Punk: Resistance and Rebellion in Everyday Life (2016). He has taught at Hobart and William Smith since 2001.
