Dr Petra Johana Poncarova

  • Marie Curie Fellow (Scottish Literature)

Biography

Petra Johana Poncarová is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Glasgow. She serves as secretary of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures and is one of the co-directors of Ionad Eòghainn MhicLachlainn | National Centre for Gaelic Translation

Her monograph Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival has been published by Edinburgh University Press in 2024. Her Scotnote Study Guide on Derick Thomson’s Gaelic poetry appeared in 2020 (Association for Scottish Literature).

The project ERSKINE, supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, guaranteed by UKRI, and carried out at the University of Glasgow in 2023-2025, explores the Gaelic magazines founded by Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar in the first decades of the twentieth century and their impact on the development of Gaelic literature and Scottish national movement.

Petra is the executive editor of the SCOPUS-listed academic journal Litteraria Pragensia and a member of the editorial board of SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature (Brill / De Gruyter).

Before joining Glasgow University, Petra was based at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, in 2018-2023, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the project KREAS (OP RDE) and project manager of the European Joint Doctorate MOVES (Horizon 2020; Marie Curie Actions); and served as Chair of the External Relations and Communications Committee and Vice Chair of the Academic Senate. She was also a member of the organising team of the International Summer School of Romanticism (2022, 2023), held at Charles University and co-organised with Queen Mary University of London, Sorbonne University, University of Oxford, Ghent University, and other partner institutions; and served as manager of the 3rd World Congress of Scottish Literatures (Prague, 2022). In 2023, she coordinated a project focused on the development of Scottish Studies in Prague as part of the Strategic Partnership between Charles University and University of St Andrews.

Research interests

  • Twentieth-century Scottish Gaelic literature (Derick Thomson; Tormod Caimbeul; Sorley MacLean; Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar)
  • Intersections between Scottish nationalism and the Gaelic revival
  • Scottish magazines and periodical press
  • Highland Clearances in Scottish literature and culture
  • Gaelic and translation
  • Ossian controversy
  • Ghost story in the British Isles

Teaching

At Charles University in Prague, Petra taught compulsory and elective BA and MA courses in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, including 'Ghost Story in the British Isles' and 'Literature of the Scottish Islands'. She also taught the special course 'Ossian and the Topos of the Heath in Gaelic and International Context' as part of the International Summer School of Romanticism. She supervised BA, MA, and PhD theses on various topics in Scottish and British literature.