• Reader (School of Interdisciplinary Studies Administration)

telephone: 01387702021
email: Valentina.Bold@glasgow.ac.uk

Biography

Dr Bold was educated at the University of Edinburgh, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Glasgow.  She was one of the first lecturers at the Dumfries Campus, where she came in 1999 after working previously in the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen where she worked on studying and promoting the traditional culture of Northern Scotland.  Before that, she worked at the University of Glasgow, in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies.

Research interests and current projects

Research interests include the literature and oral traditions of Scotland, particularly poetry, storytelling and song but also customs and beliefs.  Dr Bold is interested in cultural heritage, both in Scotland and in Scottish diaspora communities, such as those within Canada and the U.S.A. She has served as Director of the Crichton Tourism Research Centre, supervising a research project into usage of the Southern Upland Way (funded by the Southern Upland Partnership) and was also a Principal Investigator, along with Dr Donald Macleod, in the Centre for Research into Regional Development (a European project through the Rural Development fund) which had special relevance to small and medium sized businesses in the South of Scotland.

Dr Bold has a special interest in the literary and song traditions of Southern Scotland, from the eighteenth century onwards, particularly in the work of Robert Burns and James Hogg.  During 'Homecoming' year she is speaking on Burns in locations as far apart as Vancouver and Washington, as well as in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and she recently published a new edition of Burns's Merry Muses of Caledonia  with illustrations by Bob Dewar (Luath Press, 2009).  She provided the introduction for a new edition of James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Merchiston Press, 2009) and is currently working on an edition of James Hogg’s Brownie of Bodsbeck for the Stirling/South Carolina edition of the Complete works of James Hogg.  Future projects include a monograph considering consideration of Scottish identity in North America, a comparative study looking at European poets of the nineteenth century and an edition of the Kitty Hartley manuscript, held in the Ewart Library, Dumfries: Scotch Songs from Scotch Corner: the Kitty Hartley manuscript.

Dr Bold has supervised postgraduate students on topics as diverse as the song traditions of South West Scotland and tourism, the traditional expressive arts, Morris dancing, as well as on the work of specific writers including James Barke and Robert Burns.  She is happy to discuss supervision of a variety of topics relating to Scottish literature and oral traditions, particularly from the seventeenth century onwards, as well as on Scottish folklore and traditional culture.

Grants

• Major research funding to establish CRRED, including £250K from the European Regional Development Fund, and £250K match funding from Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Power, the Crichton Foundation, University of Glasgow, University of the West of Scotland and Scotish Agricultural College.
• Additional funding of £80K secured from Scottish Enterprise to fund a Research Fellowship in Tourism, Heritage and the Environment.
• British Academy Funding to attend 5 international conferences. 
• Carnegie Trust Funding for field research costs in Nova Scotia, 2004 and for publication subsidy, 2006.
• Scottish Arts Council funding in 1998, 2003 and 2004 and Shetland Arts Trust funding in 2004.
• Funding from Scottish Cultural Access Network and the Murray Trust in 1999, to finance £40K project, Northern Folk CD-rom.

Current research students

Allan Baldwin

• Thesis title: Performance in tradition based expressive arts

Undergraduate

• Narratives of Scottish Identity (convenor)
• Broadside Ballads (convenor)
• Student placements (convenor)
• Research Methods for Social Sciences (guest lecturer)

Postgraduate

• Heritage Management in context: Theories and Practice (convenor)
• South West Scotland: Image & Identity (convenor)

Professional membership

• Member of Scottish Government Working Group on Literature relating to Creative Scotland
• Ormiston Roy Fellow, University of South Carolina, 1998
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Invited lectures/presentations

• Invited by the Glasbenonarodopisni inštitut (Institute of Ethnomusicology, Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences), Slovenia to Ljubljana to lecture and research, through the Royal Society of Edinburgh link, 2008, and to assist in organising the 75th anniversary conference, 2009
• Erasmus guest lecturer, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, 2005 and Socrates guest lecturer, University of Konstanz, 2002
• Presenter, Scotland at the Smithsonian, Washington 2003
• Invited speaker to international conferences starting with the Folklore Studies Association of Canada, Quebec City 2001 and continuing to, for instance, the Burns conference in Prague, 2009, Washington Burns conference (funded by Scottish government and for which Dr Bold was an advisor) 2009 and Burns conference, Vancouver, 2009. Invited speaker in venues within Scotland including the National Library of Scotland and the 'Aye Write' festival in Glasgow (2009).
• Have been invited to, and spoken in, places including Britain and Ireland, Canada (Ottawa, Quebec City, Vancouver, Monkton, St John’s), U.S.A. (Portland, Buffalo, Rochester, Albuquerque, Charleston), Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Germany and Holland.

Conference organisation

I have co-organised conferences including

• 1st Annual Robert Burns Summer School, with the Robert Burns World Federation, in 2003
• 7th Conference on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster held by the School of Languages and Literature at the University of Aberdeen in 2003
• James Barke Centenary Conference, in collaboration with Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow, the Association for Scottish Literary Studies conference, ‘Debateable Lands’ in 2007
• ‘Sustainable Business Development’, with the Centre for Research into Regional Development (CRRED) in 2007
• Washington Library of Congress Burns conference in 2009
• Burns conference in Dumfries in 2009.
• Member of Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Robert Burns in Global Culture 2009 organising committee