Current Research:

My current area of research are literary, cinematic and visual representations of rivers, focusing on how creative interpretations of waterscapes, specifically rivers and lakes, contribute to our understanding of complex social transformations and contentious issues. Key themes include wartime traumas (rivers as watery graves and sites of wartime atrocities); shifting postwar identities (divided communities), deindustrialisation and environmental issues; local and global migration (representations of rivers as transit points on global and local migration routes). While my primary focus is on the postwar Balkans as well as Central Europe, I am interested in examining similar dynamics in other global postconflict and posttraumatic locations, in order to draw parallels and comparisons.

My forthcoming article on the theme is “’Neither here, nor there:’ Riverscapes in films on migration,” which will be published in Modern Languages Open (accepted for publication). Other forthcoming articles are “Disturbed Waters and Homerivers: Representations of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Postwar Riverscapes” (submitted to Nationalities Papers and at revision stage) and “’This is my lake and I came to live here:’ Waterways as sites of displacement and refuge,” currently drafted for consideration of Narodna umjetnost: Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research.

I am also developing a portfolio of knowledge exchange/impact-generating activities. My current impact spin-off initiative, “The river runs through it: emotions, perceptions, and memories on both sides of the Sava River,” supported by Impact Development Evaluation Fund (IDEF), focuses on the Sava River region, which is a triple border (interstate, EU, Schengen), and affected by the above-mentioned issues. In partnership with a local cultural heritage partner The Brodsko Posavlje Museum, project participants are invited to share memories, ideas, and experiences, and be empowered to create their own narratives of the river in creative and non-confrontational ways. 

Please contact me if any aspect of this project is of interest. I welcome possible collaborative projects on the topic as well.

I am currently a co-director of Arts Lab in Migrations in Humanities. As of 2021 I am also a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. 

Past Research:

Aimed at international, non-Czech readers as well as Czech audience, my recently published monograph In Search of a Shared Expression: Karel Čapek and Imaginative Geography of Europe (Prague: Faculty of Philosophy Press, 2019) examines Karel Čapek’s travel writing opus from different theoretical perspectives, and contextualises it within Czech and European interwar modernist travel writing poetics, and explores the links with visual art of the period. You can hear more about it in my interview with Radio Prague and read about it in the review published by The National. I also participated in BBC Radio3 programme The Robots Are Us on the occassion of 100th anniversary of the first staging of his play R.U.R. in 1921, and was interviewed on the same topic by the UK-based radio station Resonance FM.

I was a principal investigator of the project How to Talk About Migrations: Current Academic Research in Migration Studies and its Relevance for School Curriculum in Scotland and Further Afield (funded by Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Awards). 

My interest for migration studies is not only academic; it has been informed by knowledge exchange activities aimed at non-academic audience, such as a highly successful two-day event “Memories and Experiences of Migration: The Balkans and Beyond” (7-8 November 2018), which focused on the impact of memory and personal experience on our understanding of political and social upheavals, and linked experiences of migration and displacement resulting from two wars and two different geographical and historical periods, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and the on-going wars in Syria and the Middle East in general. In 2016 I received (together with Dr. Jan Culik) the University of Glasgow International Knowledge Exchange Commendation for our partnership with the Human Rights Watch. In 2020 I was honoured to participate in Yugosplaining the World project along with prominent diaspora writers, academics, artists from former Yugoslavia, assessing the legacy of the country, stereotypes, our knowledge and experience 25 years after the war and in the time of major upheavals.

I am also a member of the University's Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies.

I participated in a project on the narratological construction of space at Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic (September 2013 – June 2015). This research work has produced an article on representations of America in the 1950s and 1960s Czech travel writing (Journeys, 2015), an article on topographies of Prague in Jiří Weil’s work (Bohemica Olomucensia, 2015), as well as in contributions to a monograph on narratology of space (Palacký University Press, 2015).

List by: Type | Date

2024-2025 (October - March) Impact Development Evaluation Fund support for the project "The river runs through it: emotions, perceptions, and memories on both sides of the Sava River"

2020- Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshops Award for the project "How to Talk About Migrations: Current Academic Research in Migration Studies and its Relevance for School Curriculum in Scotland and Further Afield" (1 March 2020-1 March 2021). Grant value £9,928.70

2018 (September) University of Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Grant for the event "Memories and Experiences of Migration: The Balkans and Beyond" (7-8 November 2018) 

2018 (August) Columbia University Council for European Studies Small Grant for the event "Memories and Experiences of Migration: The Balkans and Beyond" (7-8 November 2018)

2018 (June) BEMIS Scotland Small Grant for the event "Memories and Experiences of Migration: The Balkans and Beyond" (7-8 November 2018)

2015 (July) – 2016 (June) OPVK POST-UP POST-UP II research grant; Palacký University, Olomouc

Project description: completion of the monograph on Karel Čapek’s travel writing and an article on references to visual means in Milan Kundera’s novels. Grant value £ 15,397 

2013 (April) – 2015 (June) Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Czech Language and Literature, Palacký University, Olomouc (European Social Fund/Czech Ministry of Education grant - CZ 1.07/2.3.00/30.000)

Project: “Narratological Analysis of Space in Literature.” Grant value: £ 76,897.

2014 (1 January – 31 December) Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland

Project: "Representation of an Absent Space: Construction of the North America and New York in the 1950s and the 1960s Czech Travel Writing" (Project Number 31726). Grant value: £ 2,500.

2012 (1 April – 31 August) Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland

Project: “Textuality of Maps, Photographs, and Images: Visual Identity in Slavenka Drakulić’sFrida’s Bed” (Project Number 66254). Grant value: £ 1,000.

I am an experienced supervisor and I welcome postgraduate (MLitt/MPhil/PhD) supervision in the fields of comparative literature, cinema studies, migration studies, travel writing studies and text/image studies. When it comes to area studies, I'll be happy to supervise projects in Central European and Balkan (South-East) studies. Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional supervision is highly encouraged. Please do contact me to discuss your ideas and projects.

On-going PhD supervision:

Liu, Yuan. “Translating Memories of the ‘Forgotten Holocaust’: Affect, Intertextuality, and Mediated Trauma.”  

Ondruskova, Karolina. "How to Awake Dormant Nations? Nationhood and cultural identity in the period of National Revival up to the creation of The First Czechoslovak Republic" (1818-1918)"

• Chen, Canyu
  Transculturation of Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai: A Study of Identity and Community
• Hanson, Thomas
  Remembering ‘The Troubles’: Contextualisation Practices in Archiving of Conflict Photography

Binti, Azalea Ahmad Kushairi. Beyond Kitsch: An Ecocritical Psyche Analysis of Malay Fokloric Tales (PhD, 2024).

Cameron, Ross. Between Balkanism and Orientalism: British Imaginative Geographies of Islam in the Balkans, 1821-2016 (PhD, 2024)

Michalovska, Beatrice. Refugees, Migrants, Vagabonds. East German Fleeing to the Federal Republic of Germany in Russian, Czech, Polish and English Language Press (1989). (PhD, 2024)

Ward, Kenneth. Before and After the New Wave: Subversion and Poetics in Five Decades of Karel Kachyňa's Films. (PhD, 2022)

Storrie, Gareth. The Black Experience in Czechoslovak Cinema. (PhD, 2022)

Beaton, Sam. Chronicling Private Lives: The Narratives of Fulfilment in Helena Třeštíková's Longitudinal Documentary Films (PhD, 2018)

Michalovska, Beatrice. The Prague Exit: Representations of East German Migration in the Official Press of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1989 (MPhil, 2018)

Ward, Kenneth. Taking the New Wave Out of Isolation: Humor and the Tragedy of the Czechoslovak New Wave and Post-Communist Czech Cinema (MPhil, 2017)

I teach and convene courses on undergraduate and postgraduate level in Comparative Literature and History. I am also a Comparative Literature Honours convener and Postgraduate Research Convener for SMLC.

I am also actively working on incorporation of Croatian literature, film, and culture components within the existing Comparative Literature and History teaching provision. The teaching of Croatian Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) of Glasgow University is generously supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport, and SMLC is listed by the Ministry as one of the Centres of Croatian Studies abroad. We seek to develop this cooperation further. For more information on Croatian component, as well as possibilities of collaboration please contact me by e-mail: mirna.solic@glasgow.ac.uk.

I currently teach the following courses:

Level 1 and 2:

• Comparative Literature 2B (Exploring Identity)
• Comparative Literature 2C (Displacement and Migration on Screen)
• Comparative Literature 1C (Heroes: Heroic Women)
• Core Culture 1

Honours teaching:

• Censorship in Western Cultures
• Migration and Displcement on Screen
• Intercultural Readings
• Text/Image Cultures: Theories and Practice
• Holocaust in Literature and Film
• Classic European Cinema
• Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Croatia: 20th Century History Through Literature
• Myths and Modern Imagination
• Narrating the City: Representations of City Space in Literature and on Film
• Poland and Its Neighbours
• The Medievalists: The Middle Ages in 20th Century Eastern and Central Europe

PG Teaching:

• Transnational Constructions of Gender
• MSc in Translation Studies: Literary Translations
• Comparative Literature MLitt: Introduction to Comparative Literature

Conference Presentations

2024 "Disturbed Waters and Riverine Home/lands: Representations of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Postwar Riverscapes." Why Remember? 2024 Conference. London College of Communication/Sarajevo, 12-15 July.

2024 “'Neither here, nor there:' Riverscapes in films on migration." Keywording the European Irregularized Migration conference. Zagreb, 11-14 April.

2019 "Rehumanisation of suffering: parallel histories in Igor Coko's photoessay Trapped: Hell is Around the Corner (2017)." Narratives of Forced Migration in the 20th and the 21st Century. University of Stirling, 16-18 September.

2018  "Travelling through and travelling within: Cinemtic constructions of imaginative geography of Croatia in the films of the 2000s." Borders and Crossings. International Conference on Travel Writing. Brijuni, Croatia, 13-16 September. 

2015    “Arriving Into Normality: Representations of Disability in post-1989 Czech Films.” Rethinking Disabilities on Screen. University of York, 14 May 2015.

2014   "Representation of an Absent Space: Construction of the North America and New York in the 1950s and the 1960s Czech Travel Writing." Fenomén cestopisu v literaturách Střední Evropy, Palacký University, Olomouc, 25-26 March 2014

2012    “Textuality of Maps, Photographs and Images: Visual Articulation of Identity in Contemporary Croatian Women’s Writing.”Displaced Women: Multilingual Narratives of Migration in Europe, Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow, 28-30 March 2012

2010    “Jak se cestuje a vypravuje o cestování: nástin mezižánrové hry mezi Čapkovými cestopisy a komerčními turistickými žánry.“ 4th Congress of World Czech Literary Studies. Institute of Czech Literature, Prague, 28 June – 3 July 2010

2009    “’Young Croatian Prose’ After the War.” 3^rd Annual CRCEES Research Forum. University of Glasgow, 14-15 May 2009

2007    “Karel Čapek: “Simple Forms” as the Art of Story-Telling.” Midwest Slavic Conference. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. April 12-14, 2007

2005    „Zapomenutá středoevropská variace: ‚Majitelé klíčů’ Milana Kundery” [The Forgotten Central European Variation: Milan Kundera’s Key Owners] 3. Kongres světové literárněvědné bohemistiky. 28 June – 3 July 2005, Institute for Czech Literature, Prague, Czech Republic

2005    "Women in Ottoman Bosnia as Seen Through the Eyes of Luka Botić, a Christian Poet" (revised version of "The Influence of Bosnian Sevdah and Dalmatian Ballas in the work of Croatian 19^th century writer Luka Botić.") 10^th Annual Association for the Studies of Nationalism (ASN) World Convention 2005. Columbia University, 14-16 April, 2005

2004    "The Influence of Bosnian Sevdah and Dalmatian Ballas in the work of Croatian 19^th century writer Luka Botić." 14^th Biennal Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore. 15-17 April 2004, The University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi

2003    "The City as Prison - 'Urbicide' as the Articulation of Memory, Trauma, and History in the Contemporary Literature of Bosnia." Convention of American Association of the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) 20-23 November 2003, Toronto, Canad