SAHA Conversations

Who was Robert Burns?

Join us on a SAHA Conversation with Dr Paul Malgrati and learn more about Scotland’s National Bard and the celebration of his life and works that takes place on his birthday, January 25h.

Dr Paul Malgrati is a scholar and poet from France, specialist of modern Scottish literature at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI).

Paul completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews as well as a two-year post-doctoral contract at the University of Glasgow. His award-winning research led to the publication of his first monograph, Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics. The Bard of Contention. 1914-2014 (EUP, 2023), which explores Burns’s legacy in Scottish national culture, from Victorian unionism to contemporary nationalism.

Between 2018 and 2023, Paul has also completed three research projects: ‘Joe Corrie (1894-1968): Miner, Playwright, Activist’ (St Andrews, PI, 2018-19); ‘The Burns Supper in History and Today’ (Glasgow, RA, 2020-22) and ‘The Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation: Creating Digital Futures & Networks’ (Glasgow. RA, 2021-23).

Alongside scholarship, Paul is also known as a poet and translator. In 2020, his poetic work was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize, which led to the publication Poèmes Écossais (Blue Diode Press, 2022): the first collection of poetry in the Scots language by a non-native anglophone. Such Franco-Scottish interests were also developed in Paul’s French translation of Robert Crawford’s Curriculum Violette, published in bilingual edition by Molecular Press in 2021. That same year, Paul also joined the team of Revue Écossaise, the first printed, Francophone magazine about Scotland (which has since developed into a podcast).

The episode is also available on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts.

If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share it on your favourite social media platform. You can tag SAHA on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn and Facebook (Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance).

What does whisky mean to you?

Join us on a SAHA conversation with Lisa Maria Feige on whisky, literature, poetry and  representations of Scottishness in the history of Scotland’s national drink

Lisa is a PhD Student at the University of Regensburg, the working title of her dissertation is "Freedom an' Whisky gang thegither? Representations of Scottishness in the History of Scotland's National Drink".

The episode is also available on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts.

If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share it on your favourite social media platform. You can tag SAHA on Instagram (@SAHA_voice), Bluesky (@sahavoice.bsky.social) LinkedIn and Facebook (Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance)

To mark International Open Access Week, we had the pleasure of having a SAHA Conversation with Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Associate Head of BMus with a specialism in Historical Musicology at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and a member of the Editorial Board of the Scottish Universities Press (SUP).

Scottish Universities Press (SUP) is a fully open access publishing press coordinated by the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) and managed by 20 member libraries on a not-for-profit basis. The SUP model provides a clear and cost-effective route for researchers to make their work freely available to a global audience, extending the impact of research across society and meeting the requirements of funders. SUP delivers a full-service publishing experience with open communication and transparent processes from peer review through to promotion. SUP is community-led and responsive to the needs of the academic community that it serves.

You can read more about SUP on their website sup.ac.uk and on the guest blog written by Dominique Walker (available here). Visit rcs.ac.uk from more information on The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

This episode was recorded on October 9th, 2025, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Happy World Music Day!

To mark World Music Day, we had the pleasure of having a SAHA Conversation with Dr Emily Doolittle, a composer, zoomusicologist, and Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Canadian-born, Scotland-based composer Dr Doolittle grew up in Halifax Nova Scotia and was educated at Dalhousie University, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, Indiana University and Princeton University. From 2008-2015 she was Assistant/Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Cornish College of the Arts. She is currently an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Dr Doolittle was awarded a 2016 Opera America Discovery Grant, as well as funding from the Hinrichsen Foundation and the Canada Council of the Arts, for the development of her chamber opera Jan Tait and the Bear, which was premiered by Ensemble Thing, with Alan McHugh, Catherine Backhouse, and Brian McBride, conducted by Tom Butler and directed by Stasi Schaeffer, at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. Jan Tait and the Bear received further funding from Creative Scotland, the Hope Scott Foundation, and an RCS Athenaeum Award for performance in the Made in Scotland Showcase at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Doolittle is currently collaborating with Greenlight Creative to create an animated video of Jan Tait and the Bear with funding from an RCS Knowledge Exchange grant.

In this episode, Dr Doolittle will help us understand the term “zoomusicology”, Jan Tait and the Bear (a 15th-century folktale from the Shetlandic Isle of Fetlar) and so much more.

Welcome to a new episode of SAHA Conversations, a podcast by the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA).

In this episode, we will be in conversation with Professor Mario I. Aguilar, Chair of Religion and Politics and  the current director and a founding director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics at the University of St Andrews, to talk about the Conclave

Professor Aguilar completed a biography of Pope Francis (Pope Francis: His Life and Thought, 2014) that connects with many of his works on the history of the Church in Latin America and Latin American theologies previously published, including: A Social History of the Catholic Church in Chile (9 volumes, 2004–), The History and Politics of Latin American Theology (3 volumes, 2007-2008),  Cardenal Raúl Silva Henríquez: presencia en la vida de Chile 1907-1999 (2004), and Current Issues on Theology and Religion in Latin America and Africa (2002).

His research also includes what is considered to be the largest study of its kind, a ten-year research project conducted between 2007 and 2017 on religion and politics in Tibet.

Professor Aguilar is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS, 2013), Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (FRAS, 2012), Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA, 2011), Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (FRAI, 1996) and a member of the UNESCO commission of Scotland.

This episode was recorded on May 7th.

’S e Seachdain na Gàidhlig a th’ ann!

Welcome to a new episode of SAHA Conversations, a podcast by the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA).

In this episode, we will be in conversation with Professor Rob Dunbar, Chair of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh. 

Prior to assuming the Chair of Celtic at Edinburgh in June 2013, Professor Dunbar was Senior Research Professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands, a lecturer then senior lecturer in Law at the University of Glasgow (1995-2004) and reader in Celtic and Law at the University of Aberdeen (2004-2010).

In the next 25 minutes, Professor Dunbar will take us on a journey from Canada to Scotland, tell us more about the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and the creation of BBC Alba, share his favourite Gaelic expression and so much more! 

Welcome to a new episode of SAHA Conversations, a podcast by the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance.

In this episode, we will be in conversation with Dr Petra Johana Poncarová, 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. 

In the next 15 minutes, Dr Poncarová will tell us about her education, her "love story" with Gaelic and her newly published book Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)

If you like this episode, please like it and share it on your favourite social media platform.

A new SAHA conversation with Leonie Bell, Director of the V&A Dundee. Join us on a journey through the wonders of Scotland's design museum, the must visit Tartan exhibition and so much more. 

A new SAHA conversation with Iain Lindsay OBE, former British Ambassador British Ambassador, Adviser to the Bahrain Economic Development Board. Join us for a journey into the world of diplomacy, a fascinating discussion about foreign languages and what it means to be a Scottish person, and diplomat, abroad.

Welcome to a new episode of A SAHA Conversation, a podcast by the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance.

In this episode, we will talk with Hazel de Vere, a conservator who has been working for the National Records of Scotland for almost three decades. She is part of the team that works really hard to preserve the Declaration of Arbroath, which is currently on display at the National Museum of Scotland.

In this SAHA conversation, Hazel will explain what it means to be a specialist in book and paper conservation, the important work behind preserving the Declaration of Arbroath, the unexpected wonders of the sector, and so much more.