
Dr Ingeborg Birnie
Senior Lecturer
Strathclyde Institute of Education
Prize And Awards
- AURORA Woman in leadership
- Recipient
- 1/7/2023
- HASS Impact Award
- Recipient
- 8/6/2023
- Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Institution
- Recipient
- 1/9/2022
Publications
- Back to basics? : Minority and minoritised languages in the age of AI: towards an international legal policy framework
- Birnie Ingeborg
- Language and Law / Languagem e Direito (2025)
- Gàidhlig : the Gaelic language in education in Scotland
- Birnie Ingeborg, Robinson-Jones C, Jansen M
- Regional Dossier Regional Dossier (2025)
- How parental role identity shapes teacher identity : A DSMRI-based study in a Chinese community school in Scotland
- Cui Shipeng, Birnie Ingeborg, De Britos Angela
- Sage Open (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440251380713
- The social linguistic soundscape : exploring community language use in a bilingual Gaelic/ English island community
- Birnie Ingeborg
- Linguistic Landscape 16 (2025)
- The GLOCAL
- Birnie Ingeborg
- (2025)
- Investigation of the novice TCSOL teacher identity construction via dynamic systems model of role identity
- Cui Shipeng, He Yu, Birnie Ingeborg
- International Journal of Modern Educational Studies Vol 9, pp. 18-50 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.51383/ijonmes.2024.387
Teaching
Dr Birnie leads and teaches on a range of different modules across the Institute of Education, many focussed on the teaching and learning of languages or on the Early Years and Childhood practice. She is the course leader for the BA (Hons) Primary Education with Gaelic Medium Education, and was previously (2018 - 2020) course leader of the Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Issues and Impact, delivered face-to-face in Pakistan, and the MEd (blended pathway).
She supervises a large number of doctoral students, typically with a focus on language learning and teaching.
Research Interests
Dr Birnie's research interests are focussing on minority languages, both within and outside of the educational domain - in real and virtual spaces. She has received research grants from Bòrd na Gàidhlig to evaluate the use of spoken Gaelic in public settings within different communities as a measure of the vitality of the language. The findings of this study have resulted in the establishment of a charity (An Taigh Ceilidh) which promotes Gaelic social network through the creation of a physical 'breathing space' for the language. Her research has also evaluated the use of Gaelic in social media and how these can contribute to creating networks of communal practice.
More recently her work has also focussed on new technologies, and in particular the use of generative Artificial Intelligence in and for minority languages and aligning these developments with human rights, democratic principles, and ethical data use.
Professional Activities
- Linguistic Landscape 16
- Speaker
- 3/9/2025
- 86th Plenary meeting
- Consultant
- 30/6/2025
- Il Coordinatore nazionale incontra a Roma la Delegazione del Consiglio d’Europa
- Contributor
- 30/4/2025
- Roma, Tutela Minoranze Linguistiche: l’associazione Rivista Kamastra al tavolo tecnico con Confemili e la delegazione del Consiglio d’Europa
- Contributor
- 12/4/2025
- Linguistic injustices and inequality in the public domain
- Speaker
- 6/3/2025
- Co-labhairt. Cò tha a' labhairt? Cò a labhras?
- Contributor
- 26/2/2025
Projects
- Erasmus+ Project: Integrating primary and pre-school virtual exchange projects into language teacher education
- De Britos, Angela (Co-investigator) Birnie, Inge (Principal Investigator) Mouat, Clare (Co-investigator)
- Ongoing consultancy for the INVITED project (integrating primary and pre-school virtual exchange projects into language teacher education) seeks to promote the use of virtual exchange (VE) projects in primary and pre-school language education and to develop teachers' competences regarding VE by integrating VE projects with young learners into pre- and in-service language teacher education. Project members are teacher educators from five different universities in Europe in cooperation with local schools.
Outputs:
The project is going to implement a survey on teachers´ experiences with VE in pre-school and primary language education to find out about teachers´ needs.
A community for teachers interested in VE is created in the form of an e-twinning group to exchange experiences and materials and display good practice.
A teacher education module that includes the implementation of a VE project in a local school is developed, adapted for a professional development course and made available on the ESEC platform.
The project provides opportunities for pre- and in-service teachers to connect through the online community and offers support for their VE projects. It develops a teacher education module that will be part of the partners´ curricula and made available as an online training course. These outcomes will help promote the use of VE in young learner language education, develop teachers´ competences regarding VE and foster children´s and teachers´ cultural, linguistic and digital competences. - 01-Jan-2023 - 01-Jan-2026
- Rannsachadh Àrainn Eucoir: Am Puffin Bochd (English: Crime Science Investigation: The Poor Puffin)
- Ross, Kirsty (Principal Investigator) Birnie, Inge (Co-investigator) Essex, Jane (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2022 - 30-Jan-2023
- Plurilingualism in Action - FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course
- Birnie, Inge (Academic)
- MOOC to develop teachers' understanding of learning and teaching languages to explore the transformative role of languages in education.
- 01-Jan-2021
- Diversity in Science towards Social Inclusion
- Essex, Jane (Principal Investigator) Ross, Kirsty (Co-investigator) Salehjee, Saima (Co-investigator) Birnie, Inge (Research Co-investigator)
- An Erasmus+ project that seeks to explore teaching strategies that could overcome barriers to full involvement of science by school pupils with a range of personal characteristics.
- 15-Jan-2020 - 14-Jan-2023
- PALINGUI – Language learning pathways of young children – Making early language learning visible
- Birnie, Inge (Principal Investigator)
- ECML project - Language learning pathways are becoming more and more diverse as a result of linguistic and cultural diversity. This diversity means that young people can grow up with multiple languages and cultures, different practices and customs, as well as different ways of speaking and writing. The new PALINGUI project of the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe (ECML) will be looking at these diverse linguistic journeys of young learners in educational contexts and how to make these visible through a range of methods and tools. These will make it possible to identify, understand and document language learning of children age 3 to 12 and thereby create learning opportunities allowing them to progress along their language learning pathways.
- 01-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2023
- Potential for use of language observation
- Birnie, Inge (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2018 - 31-Jan-2019
Contact
Dr
Ingeborg
Birnie
Senior Lecturer
Strathclyde Institute of Education
Email: ingeborg.birnie@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 444 8088