Past events - exhibitions, workshops and performances

Dates: 28 and 29 March 2023

Venue: Assembly Roxy

Production: Andorra by Max Frisch

In brief: Staged by the German Play Society, this production of Andorra was directed by Jolie Chen and Jude Anderson Maguire and performed in German with English subtitles. It was supported by DAAD and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany Edinburgh.

Date: 2 December 2022

Venue: 50 George Square

In brief: A poster exhibition and reception which was curated by second-year students in German, as a culmination of their semester of independent research. The event featured interactive displays and quizzes, samples of previous years’ work, and a display of recent scholarship and literary works on the topic of German colonialism.

Date: 29 March 2022

Venue: 50 George Square

Organiser: Yasemin Cigiltepe (German, University of Edinburgh)

In brief: A showcase and celebration of the German language through creative sketches and performances by students at the University of Edinburgh. The students showed off their German skills through a range of creative sketches, such as acting, singing, poetry readings, German tongue-twisters, and much more.

Dates: 5 April to 29 June 2019

Venue: University Main Library

In brief: An exhibition that celebrated 100 years of the Spanish Degree at the University of Edinburgh, with items from the archives and collections exploring connections between Scotland and the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds. It included personal mementos from former students, including many from Jean Henderson (née Wagstaff), mother of our Rector, Ann Henderson, and Year Abroad memorabilia such as photos collected by Edinburgh Global.

There were also several other special events organised by the Conectando team to celebrate the centenary, including exhibition tours, youth drama workshops, a film screening of 'Nae Pasaran', a talk on Scotland and the Spanish Civil War, a special Spanish Sounds edition of St Cecilia’s Thursday Concerts, and a family exhibition trail.

Dates: 15 and 16 March 2019

Venue: Roxy Theatre

Play title: Tally’s Blood - 30 Years On

In brief: Part of the 2019 DELC Festival of European Theatre. Students performed the play in collaboration with staff, visiting playwrights and writers-in-residence in LLC. This dance-focused performance featured multilingual dialogue includes English, Gaelic, Italian, Neapolitan and dialect from an Italian region informally known as Ciociaria, between Naples and Rome.

Dates: 18 and 19 March 2019

Venue: Roxy Theatre

Play title: Wodka-Käfer

In brief: Part of the 2019 DELC Festival of European Theatre. Students performed the play in collaboration with staff, visiting playwrights and writers-in-residence in LLC. The play consisted of stories gathered by Irina Liebmann in 1982 from in a tenement building in East Berlin for Berliner Mietshaus, and the same quest undertaken by Anne Jelena Schulte in 2015.

Dates: 22 and 23 March 2019

Venues: Roxy Theatre and Augustine United Church

Play title: Les Femmes Savantes

In brief: Part of the 2019 DELC Festival of European Theatre. Students performed the play in collaboration with staff, visiting playwrights and writers-in-residence in LLC. This play was a French feminist adaption of Molière’s classic comedy in which love, education and familial obligation are negotiated.

Dates: 29 and 30 March 2019

Venue: Roxy Theatre

Play title: Luces de Bohemia

In brief: Part of the 2019 DELC Festival of European Theatre. Students performed the play in collaboration with staff, visiting playwrights and writers-in-residence in LLC. In this play, Shakespearean drama meets Spanish truest self, and an entirely new universe is created.

Date: 4 May 2018

Venue: 50 George Square

Featured guests: Dr Victoria Donovan (University of St Andrews), Stefhan Caddick, and Simon Gore

In brief: As part of their 'Enthusiasm' project exploring the story of Welsh industrialist John Hughes founding the mining town of Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine, the three featured guests presented a multimedia piece of work by the same name at this event. This event combined music, image, and discussion.

Date: 2 November 2017

Venue: City of Edinburgh Methodist Church

Guest performer: Vera Pavlova

In brief: An evening of music and performance with Russian poet and pianist Vera Pavlova, who played Tchaikovsky's 'Childhood' cycle. This was interspersed with readings from her poetry which she read in Russian, but English translations of her poetry was provided on a screen.

Date: 31 May 2018

Venue:  L’Institut français d’Ecosse, Edinburgh

Organiser: Dr Séverine Genieys-Kirk 

In brief: The second in a series of workshops examining the lives and literature of female writers from the early modern period (16th to 18th centuries). Held in French, this event centred on the novels of Madame de La Fayette, with a particular focus on La Princesse de Montpensier.

Related research: Cultural Encounters/Dialogues; Learning to see the power of women

Date: 17 May 2018

Venue:  L’Institut français d’Ecosse, Edinburgh

Format: Workshop

Organiser: Dr Séverine Genieys-Kirk 

In brief: The first in a series of workshops examining the lives and literature of female writers from the early modern period (16th to 18th centuries). Held in French, this event centred on the work of seventeenth-century playwright and novelist, Mme de Villedieu, with a focus on her play, Le Favori (1665) (H. Goldwyn and A. Evain (eds.), Théâtre de femmes de l’Ancien Régime, XVIIes, 2008).

Related research: Cultural Encounters/Dialogues; Learning to see the power of women

Dates: 16 to 17 June 2017

Venue: The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, 14 Buccleuch Place

Research strand: Global Russians: Transnational Russophone Networks in the UK

In brief: Part of the AHRC-funded research project, 'Global Russians', this two-day workshop concerned the imaginaries of 'Londongrad' - the British spaces populated and inflected by Russians, with a particular focus on cultural and media productions on the Russian presence in the UK.

Date: 14 March 2017

Venue: 50 George Square

Guest performers: Grigory Kruzhkov; Lev Oborin; Marina Boroditskaya; Christine De Luca; Jen Hadfield; Stewart Sanderson

In brief: A reading of poetry by three of Russia's leading contemporary poets, as well as three of Scotland's. The poems used Shakespeare's sonnets as a stepping-off point, and the Scottish poets translated the work of their Russian counterparts into Scottish and Shetlandic. Guests received a complimentary copy of a pamphlet of the poems and translations produced by the project. The exchange was organised by the British Council in co-operation with The Scottish Poetry Library, and supported by the Edwin Morgan Trust.

Dates: 29 July to 8 October 2016

Venue: Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh

In brief: Associating with Andy Warhol and the Beat Generation, Alice Neel (1900-1984) tended to exist on the peripheries of society. Telling the story of the turbulent events that shaped Neel’s life, The Subject and Me was the first solo exhibition of her work in Scotland. It was the latest in a series of exhibitions at Talbot Rice Gallery promoting the work of leading women artists, previously including Jane and Louise Wilson, Hanne Darboven, Jenny Holzer and Rosemarie Trockel.

A guided tour of the exhibition with Principal Curator, Pat Fisher, was included in the programme of the Recovering Women’s Past conference in September 2016.

Related research: Learning to see the power of women

Date: 8 September 2016

Venue: Centre for Research Collections, Main University Library

In brief: An exhibition of artefacts from the University of Edinburgh's Special Collections. A guided tour of the exhibition was included in the programme of the Recovering Women’s Past conference in September 2016.

Related research: Learning to see the power of women

Date: 29 February 2016

Venue: The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, 14 Buccleuch Place

Speaker: Dmity Vodennikov

In brief: An evening of poetry and performances from Dmity Vodennikov, an acclaimed Russian poet and essayist. This event took place in Russian.

Date: 23 February 2016

Venue: Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, 14 Buccleuch Place

Organisers: The Russian department and Princess Dashkova Russian Centre

In brief: A performance of Anton Chekhov's 'The Marriage Proposal' by three undergraduate Russian Studies students: Deana Davis, Anastasia Lopoukhine and Robin Veale. This 30-minute sketch was one of Chekhov's famous 'Шутки' (Jokes), and was performed in Russian.

Date: 27 November 2015

Venue: The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, 14 Buccleuch Place

Research strand: Global Russians: Transnational russophone networks in the UK

In brief: This workshop developed the Dashkova Centre's ‘Global Russian’ research strand and is part of the research project ‘Travelling Cultures: Discourses of Russian Tourism in Scotland’. It brought together international scholars examining tourism from the linguistic, historical and cultural perspectives, and the practitioners who produce tourist discourses. The workshop explored tourist narratives as a product of cross-cultural interaction, and addressed the questions of how globalisation affects the narratives produced for and by Russian tourists, and what meanings are attached to the newly emerged phenomenon of the Russian globe-trotter.

It also featured an evening with Dmitry Krylov, a travel journalist and author of ‘Neputevye Zametki’, chaired by Lara Ryazanova-Clarke and Vera Zvereva (University of Edinburgh).