Promoting Scottish literatures globally
We are a worldwide academic organisation dedicated to cultivating the study of Scottish languages, literatures and cultures across the globe.
PGR/ECR Advisory Board
Maike Dinger (she/her) is a third year SGSAH-funded PhD student at the Universities of Stirling and Strathclyde, UK. Her PhD project focuses on the cultural debate on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and explores representations and evolving narratives of the debate in Scottish fiction, poetry and other forms of text. Maike is particularly interested in how borrowings from literature and text interact with politics and national identity. She holds degrees in Cultural Studies and Philosophy (BA), and National & Transnational Studies (MA), has previously spoken and taught on Scottish literature, media, politics and culture, and is currently editor of the University of Stirling’s Postgraduate Journal, SPARK.
Statement: The PGR/ECR Advisory Board is an excellent opportunity to promote PGR interest and needs within the IASSL network. After the isolating research experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, I am particularly keen to explore new ways of connecting researchers in related disciplines and promote networks of co-operation and exchange. Together with the other PGR reps, I would like to promote (online) socials and research groups as well as work-in-progress sessions for PhD researchers. Sessions with guest speakers from within (and beyond) IASSL on academic themes and career development will further add to a network promoting international exchange, mutual learning and inspiring research.
Kaiyue He is a third-year PhD student in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her thesis ‘Muriel Spark’s Houses of Fiction’ aims to provide the first sustained engagement with all of Spark’s work from the perspective of socialism and feminism. Kaiyue has an MA at Shanghai International Studies University and an MA at the University of Leicester. She has published book reviews in Textual Practice, The Kelvingrove Review and Marx & Philosophy Society. Kaiyue is a member of the editorial board of eSharp (issue 29) and of the committee of postgraduate annual conference 2022 at the University of Glasgow.
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Statement: As a member of the PhD students Advisory Board, Kaiyue is keen to promote networks of communications for PhD students in Scottish languages, literatures, and cultures. To reach this goal, she intends to organise regular online meetings for PhD members to discuss their work and cooperation in a supportive environment, to design newsletters and posters to share academic information and resources, and to update the IASSL website with the profile of its PhD members. She hopes that these projects can help to build up a research community for PhD members of IASSL, especially those who are based outside the UK.
Roslyn Potter is a SGSAH funded PhD student at the University of Glasgow in Scottish Literature. She is particularly interested in early Scottish music, having completed a Carnegie Vacation Project on early Scottish lyrics in 2019 and her MPhil thesis on John Forbes’s Songs and Fancies (the first known book of secular Scottish songs to appear in print in 1662) and its musical and literary legacy. Roslyn’s PhD work focusses on women’s manuscript collection, song culture and bawdry in early modern Scotland. Part of her work will include creating recorded versions of these forgotten songs as shared and performed by women in the early modern household.
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Statement: Life as a PGR can be challenging and isolating. Roslyn hopes that the IASSL PhD Advisory Board can work together with PGRs and ECRs to facilitate local and international collaborations in Scottish literary studies and beyond, expanding the wonderful global community of scholars that already exists. She looks forward to online and in-person social occasions, and to discussing what the PGR/ECR community would like to see developed in the future to enhance our experience as researchers in Scottish literatures, languages, and cultures.