Staff Profile

I joined the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University as Senior Lecturer in German in January 2024. I am currently Head of the German Section.

I grew up in Hartlepool, County Durham, in a working-class community. I studied BA German and Dutch at the University of Sheffield (2006-10). After graduating, I spent a year as a British Council Teaching Assistant in Basel, Switzerland. I returned to Sheffield for my MA in Germanic Studies (2011-12) and then moved to King’s College London (2012-16) to undertake my doctoral research. This examined contemporary German-speaking theatre and performance. In 2015 I began teaching at the University of Oxford as Lecturer in German, first at Lincoln College (2015-16) and then at New College and St. Hugh’s College (2016-18). In 2018 I moved to the University of Bristol, where I worked first as a Teaching Associate in German (2018-22) and then as Lecturer in German (2022-24); from 2023 I was also Director of Teaching (German). 

My research interests lie in two broad areas: German-speaking theatre and performance of all periods, and the culture and literature of German-speaking Switzerland.

German-language Theatre and Performance:

My work on German-speaking theatre focusses on the contemporary, though I am also interested in theatre culture in the long eighteenth century. My doctoral research examined the work of Rimini Protokoll and director Milo Rau’s International Institute of Political Murder. I have published on Rimini Protokoll (2015, 2019) and on Rau (2019, 2023).

Swiss Literature and Culture:

My work explores Swiss literature and culture and multilingualism in contemporary literature, with a special interest in the interplay of German, Swiss German and the minority language Romansh.

I am currently working on a monograph that explores multilingual literary practices in contemporary Romansh/German writing. In this, I consider the role of multilingualism and self-translation in the writing of Arno Camenisch, Leta Semadeni and Angelika Overath, amongst others. I explore how the movement across and between languages facilitates new forms of creativity and examine the multilingual aesthetic spaces that are opened up through these texts. I link this discussion to the status of Romansh as a minority language and its relationship to the dominant language, German. I connect this discussion of literature out to a broader exploration of the formation of hybrid identities, the sense of belonging, and to cultural understandings of space in the Swiss Alps.

I have published on Angelika Overath (2019) and Arno Camenisch (2019, 2021). I am co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism (2025) on multilingualism in Swiss literature together with Rainer Guldin (Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland). My work on alpine space includes the collection The Draw of the Alps (de Gruyter, 2023), for which I was sole editor, and which includes my chapter on multilingual literary engagements with the God da Tamangur, an alpine forest in Switzerland’s Grisons. 

Current teaching:

At Newcastle I teach on the following undergraduate modules:

• SML1018 - Introduction to Literature (German strand)
• GER4018 - Place, belonging and identity in the German-speaking Alps

Postgraduate Supervision:

I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students working on:

• German theatre, performance and drama of all periods
• The literature and culture of modern Switzerland
• The Alps as a cultural space
• Literary multilingualism

Past teaching:

At Bristol I delivered a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules on both the German and Comparative Literature programmes. These included introductory modules to German-language literature, culture, and philosophy, and to comparative literature as a discipline. I developed research-led modules that explored theatre in the long eighteenth century ('Transforming the Tragic Hero(ine), 1770-1840') and brought theatre and performance methodologies to bear on questions of German national identity ('Performing Germany'). I also contributed to the PGT modules 'The Rise of the Novel in the 19th Century' and 'Cultural Encounters'.

I have supervised MA dissertations on Swiss film, comparative German-Chinese modernist literature, and multilingualism in Anglo-Indian literature.

Teaching Philosophy:

My teaching philosophy is influenced by the radical pedagogies of Paulo Freire, bell hooks and the 'Student as Producer'. I believe that teaching should challenge students' world-views whilst also encouraging them to become independent thinkers and learners.

In my teaching I aim to concretise my work as a founding member of the collective "EGS - Working towards an equitable German Studies". The collective seeks to further an equitable German Studies in the UK and Ireland and supports colleagues to further the decolonisation and diversification of the discipline, our teaching and our research.

• Articles

  • McClelland R. Between Theatre and Courtroom: Citational Practices in Milo Rau's Zürcher Prozesse. Colloquia Germanica 2023, 55(1-2), 125-141.
  • McClelland,R. Between postdramatic text and dramatic drama: Recent German playwriting by Lukas Bärfuss and Katja Brunner. Humanities 2020, 9(3). In Preparation.
  • McClelland,R. Shaping Multilingual Identity in Angelika Overath’s Bilingual Romansh-German Poetry. Modern Language Review 2019, 114(3), 480-497.
  • McClelland R. “Stoß in [die] Modellschweiz ein”: Simulating Switzerland as Alpine Heimat in Stefan Kaegi’s “Mnemopark” (2005). Forum for Modern Language Studies 2019, 55(1), 20-35.

• Book Chapters

  • McClelland R. The Draw of the Alps. Introduction. In: McClelland R, ed. The Draw of the Alps: Alpine Summits and Borderlands in German-speaking Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023, pp.1-15.
  • McClelland R. God da Tamangur: An Alpine landscape of longing and loss. In: McClelland R, ed. The Draw of the Alps: Alpine, Summits and Borderlands in German-speaking Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023, pp.141-157.
  • McClelland R. Multilingual Strategies in Arno Camenisch’s Bündner Trilogie: Thoughts Towards an ‘Ultraminor’ Literature. In: Jones K; Preece J; Rees A, ed. International Perspectives on Multilingual Literatures. From Translingualism to Language Mixing. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021, pp.100-120.
  • McClelland R. “Schweiz, erwache!” Milo Raus City of Change (2010/11), das Theater und die Schweizer Demokratie’. In: K. Sidowska and M. Wąsik, ed. Vom Gipfel der Alpen... Schweizer Drama und Theater im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019, pp.221-234.
  • McClelland R. “Niemand Versteht”: Mehrsprachige Spielerei in Arno Camenisch’s Bündner Trilogie. In: J. Thaler, ed. Jahrbuch der Franz-Michael-Felder-Archiv. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2019, pp.146-159.
  • McClelland R. “Szwajcario, zbudź się!“ ‒ City of Change Milo Raua (2010-2011), teatr a szwajcarska demokracja’. In: K. Sidowska and M. Wąsik, ed. Ze szczytów Alp… Dramat i teatr szwajcarski w XX i XXI wieku. Łódz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2018, pp.141-152.
  • McClelland R. Alles nur Plunder, Prothesen, Projektionen, Perspektiven? Rimini Protokolls Uraufführung: Der Besuch der alten Dame und die Rekonstruierung der Vergangenheit auf der Gegenwartsbühne. In: B. Burns and M. Pender, ed. Konstruktionen der Vergangenheit in der Deutschschweizer Literatur. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015, pp.113-127.

• Edited Book

  • McClelland R, ed. The Draw of the Alps: Alpine Summits and Borderlands in German-speaking Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023.