Laura Bradley

Dean of Postgraduate Research, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Personal Chair of German and Theatre.

  • College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
  • German Section, Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 3.34
50 George Square

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LH

Availability

  • Office hour: Monday 3:30-4:30 pm (teaching weeks only)

Biography

Background

My background is in German, theatre and history. I gained a Congratulatory First for my BA in German and History at the University of Oxford (St Edmund Hall), and went on to be awarded an MSt in European Literature (Distinction) and a DPhil in German, also from the University of Oxford. I held a Junior Research Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, for two years before coming to Edinburgh in 2005. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2011 and to a Personal Chair in 2016, and I have been Dean of Postgraduate Research for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences since 2022.

Qualifications

BA (Hons), MA, MSt, DPhil (Oxon)

Responsibilities & affiliations

Dean of Postgraduate Research, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Executive Member, Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities

Deans' Network Member, Scottish Graduate School of Social Science

Editorial boards

General Editor, German Monitor

Editorial Board Member, The Brecht Yearbook 

Editorial Board Member, Brecht Studies Book Series

Editorial Board Member, The Bithell Series of Dissertations

External examiner roles

2024-27: University of Oxford, Final Honour School of Modern Languages

2018-22: University of Leeds, undergraduate and PGT programmes in German

2015-19: King’s College London, undergraduate programmes in German

2012-16: University of Manchester, undergraduate programmes in German

2012-15: University of Bristol, PGT MA in Modern Languages

PhD External Examining: Flinders University (Australia), University of Bristol, King’s College London, and Birkbeck.

Undergraduate teaching

I teach German language and literature to undergraduates at all levels, and enjoy teaching grammar as much as literature and theatre! My specialisms include an Honours Option on Bertolt Brecht, a second-year option on Culture, Modernity and the City in the Weimar Republic, lectures on the dramatist Christoph Hein and Brecht's exile poetry, as well as a range of German language classes. I led the development of a suite of six new interdisciplinary DELC courses, such as Cultural Responses to War, which have now been running successfully for a number of years, and I also led the development of our current second-year German options.

Postgraduate teaching

At MSc level, I supervise dissertations for students on the MSc in Comparative Literature and MSc in Translation Studies, and I have supervised several MSc by Research students working on their own tailor-made programmes of research. I've also taught on a range of MSc courses, such as Autonomy of Performance; Theatre, Performance, Performativity; and Brecht and Beyond.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I am particularly interested in supervising PhDs on Bertolt Brecht, German or Austrian theatre and performance, censorship, spectatorship, representations of crime, or the GDR. As the Dean of Postgraduate Research for the College, I have a lot of experience of supporting postgraduate students, including with highly competitive funding applications. I also have experience of cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary supervision, and of helping my students to gain valuable professional development experience via paid internships. If you're considering applying for a PhD and think I might be a good fit for your project, then you're very welcome to contact me via email (laura.bradley@ed.ac.uk) with a short outline of your research proposal or ideas.

Past PhD students supervised

Anna McEwan: 'Gendered Citizenship and Women's Relationship to Systems of Social Care: Investigating the GDR’s Frauenparadies (1971-1989)'. Joint supervision with the University of Glasgow (History). Funded by SGSAH, completed 2024. Anna now holds a Leverhulme Study Abroad Scholarship at the University of Potsdam.

Lucy Byford: 'Staging the Carnivalesque: Subversive Strategies in Print and Performance from Simplicissimus to Dada'. Funded by SGSAH, completed 2023. Joint supervision with History of Art. Lucy is currently a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bremen.

Katie Hawthorne: 'Contextualising Liveness: A Comparative Study of Digitally Distributed, Digitally Mediated and Digitally Located Performance in Edinburgh and Berlin, 2017-19'. Funded by the Wolfson Foundation, completed 2022. Katie went on to hold a Fellowship at the Academy for Theatre and Digitally in Dortmund, and now works for the Academy as well as writing for publications including The Guardian.

Lizzie Stewart: 'Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration: Mimesis and Mimeticism in the Plays of Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu/Günter Senkel'. Funded by the AHRC. Monograph published by Palgrave Macmillan. Lizzie is now Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages, Culture & Society at King's College London.

Michael Wood: ‘Making the Audience Work: Textual Politics and Performance Strategies for a "Democratic" Theatre in the Works of Heiner Müller. Funded by the AHRC. Monograph published by Camden House. Michael went on to hold a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.

Patrick Harkin: 'On the Horns of a Dilemma: Clarity and Ambivalence in Oppositional Writing in the Wake of the Uprising of 17 June 1953 in the German Democratic Republic'. Funded by the AHRC. Patrick published his research on Brecht in volume 5 of the Edinburgh German Yearbook.

Research summary

My research focuses on Brecht, twentieth-century German theatre, and culture in the former German Democratic Republic, combining archival research with theatrical, literary, and historical analysis. I’ve published two monographs with Oxford University Press on Brecht and East German theatre censorship, plus a co-edited volume with Camden House, and Oxford University Press will be publishing my third  monograph in spring 2025. This research has been supported by external funding from the AHRC, British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, Carnegie Trust, and DEFA Foundation.

Research interests

My first monograph, 'Brecht and Political Theatre' (OUP, 2006), explored the performance history of Brecht’s play 'The Mother' from its premiere in 1932 to 2006. As 'The Mother' was the only play that Brecht directed in the Weimar Republic, in exile, and in post-war East Berlin, it is uniquely placed to show both how he developed as a theatre director and how he and later directors reinterpreted the play for new contexts and audiences. I went on to co-edit 'Brecht in the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity' (Camden House, 2011) with Karen Leeder, and to write a new monograph, 'Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship' (OUP, 2025), supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust. This monograph explores vision, observation, and spectatorship in twelve of Brecht’s plays, spanning his career from the Weimar Republic to the GDR. It relates this analysis to his formative experiences of spectatorship, his poems and theories, and his productions. Finally, it investigates Brecht’s attempts to transform the composition of the audience and cultivate critical spectatorship at the Berliner Ensemble after the Second World War.

My second major area of research is East German censorship and cultural history, focusing on theatre but extending to poetry, crime and detection in television and film, and prose. My monograph 'Cooperation and Conflict: GDR Theatre Censorship, 1961-1989' (2010) used evidence from fifteen archives to investigate how GDR theatre censorship developed between the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall, how it varied across six regions, and how it affected genres ranging from classical tragedy to contemporary drama. My research on censorship attracted £115,780 in funding from the AHRC and British Academy, including a Follow-On Funding grant of £80,017, and it underpinned Impact case studies for REF2014 and REF2021.

Current projects

Since completing my forthcoming monograph on 'Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship', I have been researching the history of East Berlin's ghost stations during the Cold War, working with texts and manuscripts by the journalist Heinz Knobloch, alongside GDR government files on transport and culture, press material, and photographs. 

I am also working on a project about productions of plays about the Third Reich in the immediate post-war period in Germany, focusing on Brecht's 'Fear and Misery of the Third Reich' and Zuckmayer's 'The Devil's General'. This project draws on a range of archive material, including prompt scripts, rehearsal notes, correspondence between the directors and playwrights, press reviews, and first-hand accounts by theatregoers.

Knowledge exchange

I enjoy sharing my research with wider audiences, both nationally and internationally. In 2024, I appeared on an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'In Our Time' on Brecht, after contributing to two episodes of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Opening Lines' to accompany a broadcast of 'Mother Courage' as the weekend afternoon drama in 2023. I also contributed to two episodes of Benjamen Walker’s podcast series 'Not All Propaganda Is Art'. In 2020, I gave a talk on Brecht to over 200 students and teachers across South Africa via Zoom at a revision course organized by St John's College, Johannesburg. My YouTube video on Brecht's play 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle', made by the Unicorn Theatre in London, has attracted over 62,000 views, and it led to an invitation to advise on a production of Brecht’s 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' by the National Theatre of Kenya, which premiered in Nairobi and toured to 8 towns and cities in Kenya in 2018, supported by the Kenyan Ministry for Education. Director Silvia Rieger used my research on 'The Mother' for her production of the play at the Volksbühne, one of Berlin’s leading theatres, and I’ve provided academic support for productions of Brecht’s 'Arturo Ui' at the Liverpool Everyman/Playhouse and of 'The Threepenny Opera' by Fourth Monkey Theatre in Camden.

My research on East German theatre censorship sparked an exciting collaboration with the filmmaker Susan Kemp, dramatist Peter Arnott, and the Playwrights’ Studio Scotland, funded by the AHRC. In 2014-15, Peter Arnott wrote a new play – 'Ensemble' – about my research, and Susan Kemp made a documentary film – 'Writing Ensemble' – about my research and the process of creating a new play from it. We held 13 public events in Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, and Leeds, including play readings and a roundtable discussion of theatre censorship at the Edinburgh Fringe, and film screenings at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Edinburgh Filmhouse, and Hyde Park Picture House. In 2017, I went on to co-organize a symposium with the Playwrights' Studio on collaborations between theatre practitioners and academics. My public engagement work on censorship underpinned two impact case studies for REF2021 and REF2014, contributing to an excellent REF impact result.

Theatres, broadcasters, and schools are very welcome to get in touch with me to discuss opportunities for collaboration.

Project activity

Major external grants

AHRC Follow-On Funding for Impact and Engagement: £80,017 (2014-15).

AHRC Research Leave Award: £22,853 (2009)

AHRC Studentships: full fees plus stipend (2000-2003, 1999-2000)

Other external grants

British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant: £7,535 (2018-21)

Carnegie Trust Awards: £3,750 (2012, 2009, 2006)

DEFA-Stiftung Grant:  EUR. 3,000 (2010-11)

British Academy Small Research Grant: £3,840 (2006-8)

DAAD Award: EUR. 2,925 (2004)

University/College grants

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences Impact Grant: £5,000 (2018) 

University of Edinburgh Knowledge Exchange Grant: £4,300 (2010-11)

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