At the annual Scottish Literary Awards hosted by The Saltire Society on 7 December, Dr Paula Sledzinska was awarded the Ross Roy Medal, a prestigious prize which is awarded to the best PhD thesis submitted on a subject relating to Scottish literature.
The judges said that Paula’s work was 'so impressively comprehensive, not only in scale and ambition, but also in achievement and clarity, encompassing theatrical history and the medium of modern drama, with a finely tuned literary sensibility'. Entitled “‘Stories that Need to Be Told’: Identity Discourse in the Repertoire of the National Theatre of Scotland”, the thesis looks at National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) productions and assesses the ways in which they critique and help shape ‘the narrative of Scotland’. It argues that the institution itself is more inclusive and outward-looking than most other (traditional) national theatres, and it demonstrates the ways in which the NTS embraces “a polyphony of voices within national storytelling”. The prize was accepted on her behalf by Dr Eleanor Bell.
Paula submitted her doctoral thesis in December 2022.