Publications

Teaching and learning resources for endangered languages by Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi and Lily Kahn, Leiden, Brill, 2023, Pp. xxvi + 372, $155.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-90-04-53969-3

Birnie Inge

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, pp. 1-2 (2025)

https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2025.2455211

Someone like me : a trial of context-responsive science as a mechanism to promote inclusion

Birnie Ingeborg, Ross Kirsty, Essex Jane

14 (2024)

https://doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.1691

In search of Gaelic : the social linguistic soundscape as an indicator of minority language use in a bilingual English / Gaelic Island community

Birnie Ingeborg

Living Languages Vol 3, pp. 17 - 34 (2024)

https://doi.org/10.7275/livinglanguages.1994

The importance of capturing hearts and minds : the impact of parental ideologies in supporting children's minority language acquisition in the education system

Birnie Ingeborg

Living Languages Vol 3, pp. 150 - 169 (2024)

https://doi.org/10.7275/livinglanguages.2004

Com-pàirteachadh phàrant gus taic a thoirt dha ionnsachadh (cànain) - ionnsachadh bho sgrùdadh "Gàidhlig a thoirt dhachaidh"

Birnie Ingeborg, Kennedy Kerrie

Education in the North Vol 30, pp. 52-68 (2023)

https://doi.org/10.26203/3wdf-tp75

Parental engagement and involvement in supporting (language) learning : lessons from the "bringing Gaelic home" study

Birnie Ingeborg, Kennedy Kerrie

Education in the North Vol 30, pp. 35-51 (2023)

https://doi.org/10.26203/6rhw-pc47

More publications

Teaching

I lead and teach on a range of different modules across the School of Education, many focussed on the teaching and learning of languages or on the Early Years and Childhood practice. I supervise a large number of doctoral students, typically with a focus on language learning and teaching. I am currently the chair and Editor in Chief of the Northern Scotland Journal (Edinburgh University Press) and amregistered with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). I was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Institute in 2021. I have acted as an external examiner for EdD and PhD doctoral thesis and I was invited to be external expert on an initial teacher education reaccreditation panel. I hold a number of external examiner positions at the University of the Highlands and Islands (including the BA Gàidhlig is Leasachadh and MEd Foghlam delivered through the medium of Gaelic), The University of the West of Scotland and the University of Cumbria.

I regularly appear on BBC programmes, including news contributions and input to current affairs programmes to talk about my work in Gaelic and education.

Research Interests

My interests in promoting (minority) language use resulted in a £25,000 research grant from Bòrd na Gàidhlig which looked at the extent to which spoken Gaelic is used in public community settings. The findings of this study have contributed to the successful establishment of the social enterprise An Taigh Ceilidh (the meeting place) in Stornoway (Comhairle nan Eilean Siar), a designated social space where individuals can come and use Gaelic to socialise, meet, sing, share stories, strengthen community and social networks and create new friendships.

The promotion of social networks to use minority or endangered languages is also at the heart of my research in the use of social media and other technologies to support the use of minority languages. I am the Chair of Working Group 4 of the COST+ Action Language in the Human Machine Era (LITHME), where I am involved in organising workshops, international whole action group conferences, and the training school, where I have also delivered input on the role of current and future technologies on the continued use of minority or endangered language and sustaining language diversity.

 The promotion of Gaelic in a range of different domains to sustain its use has also resulted in my involvement as co-investigator with the Diversity in Science towards Social Inclusion Erasmus+ project (worth €108,000 to the University of Strathclyde). This has allowed me to create a holistic view of language and culture that goes beyond the traditional bounded notions of identity through the creation of culturally sensitive activities within the sociology of science paradigm. The success of this project resulted in a further, funded project (£10,000 from the Royal Society of Chemistry) called Rannsachadh  àrainn eucoir – am Puffin bochd) to further develop these notions and situate these in contemporary society.

I have also been successful in attracting funding (£3,000 Soillse) for an innovative cross-disciplinary project that brought together academics, researchers, practitioners and members of the public through a collaboration between three universities (University of Edinburgh, Stirling and Strathclyde) to explore the impact of bilingualism and language loss on patients and their caregivers. This results formed the basis of a The Conversation article which has, to date, attracted over 25,000 readers.

Professional Activities

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

Co-labhairt UNESCO

Interviewee

20/2/2025

Languages matter: Silver Jubilee Celebration of International Mother Language Day

Keynote/plenary speaker

20/2/2025

https://cnag.org (External organisation)

Member

1/2/2025

Pupils get to secondary and think 'why am I learning Gaelic?'

Interviewee

30/11/2024

More professional activities

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

More projects