KEVIN BEAN died peacefully at his home in Liverpool on October 12, with his beloved partner Pauline (Hadaway) at his side.
With his passing, we have lost one of the nicest people to have taught at a British university.
I had the good fortune to have been Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University when he was appointed and his display of intellectual brilliance, warmth and generosity at his interview has remained with me ever since.
He was a brilliant and popular teacher, his courses regularly oversubscribed, his students ever in receipt of that characteristic generosity and breadth of knowledge.
His colleagues too recognised that Kevin was the go-to person to seek information on any topic.
Kevin was born in February 1955 in Chatham, Kent, to Irish parents and attended grammar school there.
He studied History at Leicester University, then moved north to teach at Nelson and Colne College and Calderdale College in Halifax.
He completed his MA at the Liverpool Institute in 1994 going on to publish his dissertation about the IRA ceasefire that year, 'The New Departure? Recent developments in Republican strategy and ideology'.
His argument that republican thinking was in transition then informed his PhD and resultant book: The New Politics of Sinn Féin.
He was appointed lecturer in Irish Politics at the Institute in 2003 and was a key part of the team until his retirement in 2019.
Dr Kevin Bean pictured ar Stormont (Pic: Bean family)Kevin was a man of the left, indeed a very active member of Labour Party Marxists.
I smiled every time mutual friends and former students would send me photos of themselves and Kevin on various marches.
He had a strong social conscience. But he was no ideologue and I would highly recommend his YouTube analysis of the 2022 Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, a prescient analysis of a future Starmer government as well as of the then disarray of the Labour Left.
Such clear-eyed and non-ideological analysis he brought to his research.
The New Politics of Sinn Féin was seminal and, with a number of related articles, was one of the earliest analyses of how republican thinking was changing from wanting to overturn the state to becoming a potential party of government, stealing the SDLP's clothes along the way.
He was well-known and liked in Ireland and his understanding of how disadvantage worked meant he was trusted in loyalist as well as republican circles.
As such he was courageously interviewing dissident republicans in the later stages of his career.
But the world has been deprived of his insights as the project was exploded by tabloid journalists and careless and less-principled academics than himself.
Kevin was great company.
He loved walking, yet his natty dress-sense meant that however sensible the brogues, they were of fine leather, his dress Irish tweed, finished off by his impressive collection of hats. He was always carrying a newspaper, which is why this photograph of him in the Stormont Estate in Belfast, taken by his graduate student David Shaw, is so appropriate.
Amusingly, his university office was difficult to access because of the stacks of newspapers. Despite the apparent clutter, Kevin had a mental filing system of the papers, and I lost count of the many times I benefitted when he located an article for me in said newspapers.
That generosity extended to bringing bags of local print and papers back from Belfast for me to read.
He loved Belfast and it was through him that I met his partner Pauline, then running the quite magical community photography gallery Belfast Exposed.
He was also a rather good cook and healthy eater.
We all knew when Kevin was in the Institute because you could smell his characteristic lentil luncheon.
But it was his warm smile, laughter and sense of humour that all of us in the Institute will most remember.
Kevin was a true gentleman in the nicest sense of that compliment.
He was thoughtful, honourable and had a strong sense of social justice.
Alike with his family and friends there will be a keen sense of loss among the very many students that he inspired as well as those people and organisations in Britain and Ireland that he helped and spoke up for.
I was honoured to have worked with him and been inspired by him at Liverpool.
Kevin is survived by his partner Pauline, his sister Patsy, his children from his marriage to Susan - Kathleen, Bernadette, Teresa and James-Joseph - and by five grandchildren.
His funeral is scheduled to take place Thursday, November 14 at 10am at St. Anthony of Padua Church, Queens Drive, Liverpool L18 8BD.
Donations in memory of Kevin are welcomed to the Marie Curie Hospice and to Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Professor Marianne Elliott is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. Belfast-born Marianne was Director of the Institute from 1997 to 2014 and held the first Blair Chair of Irish Studies, which was established to recognise Tony Blair's role in brokering the Good Friday Agreement, from 2007 to 2014.
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