| Chair of Gaelic University of Glasgow | |
|---|---|
 Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh | |
| Formation | 2010 |
| First holder | Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh |
| Website | www.gla.ac.uk/celtic |
The Chair of Gaelic is a professorship in Scottish Gaelic at the University of Glasgow, in the Celtic and Gaelic department. It was established in April 2010 and is the first established Chair of Gaelic at a Scottish university. [1] [2] [3]
A Chair of Celtic had already been established at the University of Glasgow in 1956, [4] and the Chair of Gaelic was founded in April 2010 as part of the university's aim to establish itself as "a centre of excellence for the study of Celtic and Gaelic." [2] The establishment of the chair was announced on the same day as Glasgow City Council launched its new Gaelic Language Plan with an aim of making Gaelic a commonly used language by 2020. [2] [3] The Scottish Government has been putting efforts into the support and revival of Gaelic in Scotland in recent years, in line with their duties under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 established the Bòrd na Gàidhlig, a non-governmental public body responsible for the promomotion of Gaelic language in Scotland.
The first holder of the post is Professor Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, who had previously held a personal professorship in Gaelic in the University of Glasgow. Professor Ó Maolalaigh was educated at University College Dublin and lectured at the University of Edinburgh whilst completing his PhD there. [5] He was then appointed assistant professor of Celtic studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, before moving to Glasgow. [1] As head of the department at Glasgow, he appointed the first ever Gaelic language officer at a Scottish university. He is director of the Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic, a project funded by the British Academy, and is also involved in Soillse, a project led by the University of the Highlands and Islands developing a research capacity for the maintenance and revitalisation of Gaelic in Scotland. [1]
A Regius Professor is a university professor who has, or originally had, royal patronage or appointment. They are a unique feature of academia in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The first Regius Professorship was in the field of medicine, and founded by the Scottish King James IV at the University of Aberdeen in 1497. Regius chairs have since been instituted in various universities, in disciplines judged to be fundamental and for which there is a continuing and significant need. Each was established by an English, Scottish, or British monarch, and following proper advertisement and interview through the offices of the university and the national government, the current monarch still appoints the professor. This royal imprimatur, and the relative rarity of these professorships, means a Regius chair is prestigious and highly sought-after.
The culture of Scotland refers to the patterns of human activity and symbolism associated with Scotland and the Scottish people. The Scottish flag is blue with a white saltire, and represents the cross of Saint Andrew.
Joseph Watson (Seosamh) is emeritus professor of Modern Irish at University College Dublin, a Celtic Faculty chair which dates from the foundation of the National University He was Dean of Faculty 1995–2001.
Thomas Francis O'Rahilly was an influential Irish scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly in the fields of historical linguistics and Irish dialects. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy and died in Dublin in 1953. He is the creator of O'Rahilly's historical model, which has since been discredited.
Prof Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson CBE FRSE FSA DLitt was an English linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages. He demonstrated how the text of the Ulster Cycle of tales, written circa AD 1100, preserves an oral tradition originating some six centuries earlier and reflects Celtic Irish society of the third and fourth century AD. His Celtic Miscellany is a popular standard.
Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to the Celtic-speaking peoples. This ranges from linguistics, literature and art history, archaeology and history, the focus lying on the study of the various Celtic languages, living and extinct. The primary areas of focus are the six Celtic languages currently in use: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.
Thomas Owen Clancy is an American academic and historian who specializes in medieval Celtic literature, especially that of Scotland. He did his undergraduate work at New York University, and his Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently at the University of Glasgow, where he was appointed Professor of Celtic in 2005.
Kuno Meyer was a German scholar, distinguished in the field of Celtic philology and literature. His pro-German stance at the start of World War I in the United States was a source of controversy. His brother was the distinguished classical scholar, Eduard Meyer.
Early Modern Irish represented a transition between Middle Irish and Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century.
There is no standard variety of Scottish Gaelic; although statements below are about all or most dialects, the north-western dialects are discussed more than others as they represent the majority of speakers.
The Chair of Celtic is a professorship at the University of Glasgow, established in 1956 by an endowment from merchant James Crawford, the Ross Trust and the university's Ossianic Society.
Scottish Gaelic orthography has evolved over many centuries and is heavily etymologizing in its modern form. This means the orthography tends to preserve historical components rather than operating on the principles of a phonemic orthography where the graphemes correspond directly to phonemes. This allows the same written form in Scottish Gaelic to result in a multitude of pronunciations, depending on the spoken variant of Scottish Gaelic. For example, the word coimhead ('watching') may result in, ,, or. Conversely, it allows the sometimes highly divergent phonetic forms to be covered by a single written form, rather than requiring multiple written forms.
Events from the year 2005 in Scotland.
Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh is an Irish linguist who is Professor of Gaelic and Vice Principal and Head of the College of Arts / Colaiste nan Ealain at the University of Glasgow. He was born in 1966 in Dublin, Ireland.
Murray G. H. Pittock MAE FRSE is a Scottish historian, Bradley Professor of Literature at the University of Glasgow and Pro Vice Principal at the University, where he has served in senior roles including Dean and Vice Principal since 2008. He led for the University on the University/City of Glasgow/National Library of Scotland Kelvin Hall development (kelvinhall.org.uk), and has chaired Glasgow's unique early career development programme, which has been highly influential in the sector, since 2016. He has also acted as lead or co-lead for a range of national and International partnerships, including with the Smithsonian Institution, and plays a leading role in the University's engagement with government and the cultural and creative industries (CCIs), organizing the 'Glasgow and Dublin: Creative Cities' summit in the British Embassy in Dublin in 2019, and working with the European network CIVIS on the creation of a European policy document on universities and civic engagement, on which he gave a masterclass for La Sapienza University He also produced a major report on the impact of Robert Burns on the Scottish Economy for the Scottish Government in 2020; a Parliamentary debate was held at Holyrood on the recommendations, which have been cited in policy debate many times since. In 2022, he was declared Scotland's Knowledge Exchange Champion of the year. Outside the University, he served on the Research Excellence Framework (REF) Institutional Environment Pilot Panel in 2018-22, and on the National Trust for Scotland Board (2019-27) and Investment Committee, as well as acting as Co-chair of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA) and chair of the Governance Board of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. He also serves as Scottish History Adviser to the NTS and as an adviser to a wide range of other national heritage bodies and the Scottish Parliament; recently he has provided expert advice to both the Scottish and British parliaments on promoting Scotland abroad. He is on the Advisory Board of NISE, the Europe-wide research group bringing together over 40 research centres working on national identities and was President of the Edinburgh Walter Scott Club in 2019-20 and 2021-22. He has given a number of major lectures, most recently the Magnusson, MacCormack and Caledonian lectures
Dòmhnall MacAmhlaigh was a Scottish Gaelic poet and professor.
A Celtic society is a type of society at the four ancient universities of Scotland, and sometimes more broadly, at a city level, which were founded between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries in the wake of the Celtic Revival and Romanticism, with the primary aim of supporting the practical and academic study of the Scottish Gaelic language and culture. The student societies are the oldest at their respective universities, and were instrumental in campaigning for the establishment of academic departments dedicated to Gaelic studies.
Scottish Studies is an academic discipline. It is the study of the languages and literary and cultural heritage of Scotland.
