Dr Paula Sledzinska
Visiting Research Fellow, May 2026 – July 2026
Paula holds a PhD in Irish and Scottish Studies from the University of Aberdeen, where she previously studied English and Gaelic. She is the recipient of the Ross Roy Medal, awarded annually at the Saltire Society’s National Book Awards, for the best thesis related to Scottish Literature. Her research examines the relationship between theatre, national storytelling and democratic life, with a particular focus on the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS). Her doctoral work was an interdisciplinary study of NTS’s repertoire, analysing its textual and musical discourse to demonstrate how the company's creative output contributes to the construction of Scotland’s contemporary narrative as an inclusive and socially engaged nation. Paula has published on Scottish drama and presented her work internationally, with research spanning nineteenth-century and contemporary theatre in relation to questions of identity, belonging, and class. She is currently preparing a monograph based on her PhD.
Project title: Playing Radical: National Theatre of Scotland in Times of National Crisis
During her Visiting Fellowship at IASH, Paula is developing a project entitled ‘Playing Radical: National Theatre of Scotland and Independence’. The project investigates the company’s response to the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 and combines approaches grounded in literary and cultural analysis with political thought and social semiotics. Focusing on David Greig’s and David MacLennan’s The Great Yes, No, Don’t Know, Five Minute Theatre Show (2014), it explores how theatrical form enables alternative modes of political engagement and participation and examines how NTS’s practice reimagines the relationship between storytelling, performance and politics. It probes the possibilities and limits of ‘alternative ways of being national’ within a twenty-first-century stateless nation.
As part of the Fellowship, Paula is also organising an Unconference, ‘National Theatre of Scotland at 20 – Culture, Democracy, and the Stateless Nation’, funded by the British Academy ECRN Development Fund and the LLSETI Research Laboratory at Université Savoie Mont Blanc (Chambéry, France). Marking the NTS’s twentieth anniversary, this one-day event will offer an opportunity for participants from across academia, theatre, literature, politics, as well as cultural and community organisations to explore the role of theatre, literature, and cultural institutions in shaping democratic life in Scotland at a time when democratic norms and values come under strain in Europe and beyond.