Valentina maintains a wide-ranging work portfolio. She is always open to discuss new opportunities and projects, and can be contacted directly at info@valentinabold.org.

Currently she is part-time Heritage Manager for Scottish Women’s Institutes, leading a significant Heritage Lottery project, digitising SWI Archives and training members to record the experiences of Scotland’s largest women’s movement (50,000 members at its peak).

Scottish Women’s Institute, Planning Heritage Project, Ross-shire Federation.

An expert on Scottish culture, Valentina is editor of the prestigious Review of Scottish Culture; it relaunched in 2024 in a new online format. Her work on Scottish literature is widely recognised. Valentina is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh, Convenor of the Scots Language Centre, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Committee Member of the Scottish Council on Archives’ Community Archives and Heritage Group and member of the Oral History Society.

Launch of the ‘Kitchen Conversations’ book, Winchburgh 2019

Valentina is General Editor for Peter Lang‘s successful series of books, Studies in the History and Culture of Scotland which has recently published its thirteenth volume. She recently started writing a biography of Scottish journalist, poet and travel writer Florence Dixie, with funding from the Society of Authors. She is also preparing an edition of James Hogg’s The Brownie of Bodsbeck for Edinburgh University Press.

Often, Valentina provides guest lectures for universities — most recently for the University of the Highlands & Islands fully online MLitt in Scottish Heritage. She was external examiner for Heriot-Watt University in Cultural Heritage and Tourism until 2024. In 2023, as Heritage Project Manager with the Theatre Royal, Dumfries, Scotland’s oldest working theatre, Valentina developed a series of new theatre tours. She was Lead Researcher on Food Heritage Scotland, supported by Scotland Food and Drink.

Valentina is an experienced Committee member and Chair. This includes service as Vice-Chair of Literature Alliance Scotland for five years and, for for four years, being Convenor of the Scots Language Centre. For the Saltire Literary Awards she chaired the Fiction Panel in 2019, the Book of the Year and First Book panels in 2021 and Poetry Panel in 2022.

Cast of ‘The Royal Jubilee’, Scottish Poetry Library 2nd Dec 2022. Left to right: Valentina Bold, Kirsteen McCue, Ajay Close, Asif Khan, Dolina Maclennan, Sheena Wellington, Jo Miller (photograph by Zephyra Durkin).

Over 2020-21 Valentina led the co ordination and development of celebrations for the literary anniversary James Hogg 250, hosted by the University of Stirling in partnership with Ettrick & Yarrow Community Development Trust. Before Coronovarius restrictions, she co-organised an event in Washington DC at Library of Congress (March 2020) and contributed to a podcast for Wigtown Book Town’s 2020 Festival. An additional event was held with the National Library of Scotland in December 2020, celebrating Hogg and Scott’s 250th anniversaries.

The culmination was a performance in 2022 of Hogg’s The Royal Jubilee: A Scottish Mask (1822), for the first time, with support from the Scottish Poetry Library and Tannahill Fund of the University of Glasgow. With funding from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, she is continuing this work by preparing an online exhibition on the Material Culture of James Hogg, and its legacy, to be hosted on the James Hogg website..

E-mail: info@valentinabold.org