Coordinates: 55°50′55″N 4°11′52″W / 55.848643°N 4.197793°W / 55.848643; -4.197793

Parkhead (Scots: Parkheid) is a district in the East End of Glasgow. Its name comes from a small weaving hamlet at the meeting place of the Great Eastern Road (now the Gallowgate and Tollcross Road) and Westmuir Street. Duke Street and Springfield Road also meet there, to form a turreted Edwardian five-way junction at Parkhead Cross. Glasgow's Eastern Necropolis was laid out in 1847 beside the Gallowgate.

The area flourished with the discovery of coal in 1837 and grew into an industrial centre. In 1897 William Beardmore and Company became famous with the production of high grade steel and castings at the local Parkhead Forge, founded about 1837 and extended between 1884 and 1914. After years of decline, the massive plant was closed in 1976, and in 1986 the construction of the first phase of The Forge Shopping Centre began on the site. The shopping centre opened in the autumn of 1988, and in 1994 an indoor market was added adjacent to it. The final element, a retail park, was completed in three stages between 1996 and 2002.

James Connolly (Irish: Séamas Ó Conghaile, 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics. He was executed by a British firing squad because of his leadership role in the Easter Rising of 1916.

Connolly was born in an Irish slum in Edinburgh in 1868. His parents had emigrated to Scotland from Monaghan and settled in the Cowgate, an Irish ghetto where thousands of Irish settled.

He was born in St Patrick's Roman Catholic parish, which was known as "Little Ireland". His father and grandfathers were labourers. He had an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He then left and worked in labouring jobs. Because of the economic difficulties he was having, like his eldest brother John, he joined the British Army.

Alan James Ryan, FBA (born 9 May 1940) was Warden of New College, Oxford, and Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and currently a lecturer at Princeton University.

He was educated at Christ's Hospital, Balliol College, Oxford, and University College, London. Elected a fellow of New College in 1969, he returned in 1996 to take up the Wardenship. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986.

Ryan is a recognised authority on the work of John Stuart Mill, having contributed directly to the ‘Reversionary’ school, which led to a re-examination of Mill’s work from the 1970s. His academic work also takes in broader themes in political theory, including the philosophy of social science, the nature of property, and liberalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ryan has held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Essex, Keele, Princeton University, as well as the University of Virginia School of Law. He was also a Visiting Professor of Political Science at The New School.

Ryan is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. Ryan can be heard here giving a brief account of Mill's philosophy, and a defence of him as the greatest British philosopher, on the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time.