Dr Ingeborg Birnie

Senior Lecturer

Strathclyde Institute of Education

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Personal statement

Dr Ingeborg Birnie is senior lecturer in the Institute of Education at the University of Strathclyde. Her research interests are focussed on (minority) languages in and for learning, with a special focus on Gaelic. She has experience of teaching across all stages of formal education in Scotland, including early years, primary, and secondary school levels. As an internationally recognised expert in minority languages she was appointed in September 2024 as the Council of Europe Advisory Committee Member for the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities on behalf of the Netherlands. In this role, she advises the governments of the 38 Council of Europe Member States that are a signatory to this Framework in the implementation of minority rights within their particular context. She is the UNESCO Rapporteur for Ad Hoc Group 1 Provision of Education and Domains for Indigenous Education. In this capacity she reports on the work of the Ad Hoc group to the Global Task Force for Making a Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022 - 2032) and leads on the creation of Evaluation Tool for the provision of Indigenous Languages in Education which has also formed the basis of the first Global Survey on Indigenous Language. She previously led a range of international projects focussing on language learning and the promotion of plurilingual practices within the early years with for the European Centre for Modern Languages. She was the chair of Working Group 4 - Language diversity, vitality and endangerment - of the COST+ Action Language in the Human Machine Era (LITHME). In this capacity she led on the creation of a White paper to inform policy and practices in the area of minority language and ethical Artificial Intelligence. Dr Birnie is the co-chair of the Scottish Council of Deans of Education Languages Group (SCDE LG) which has representatives from all Initial teacher education institutions in Scotland.

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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. 

 

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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

Monitoring Visit to Slovenia by the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities
Consultant
2/3/2026
Technocamps Scotland: Coimpiutaireachd sa Ghàidhlig
Contributor
28/2/2026
What now for Gaelic education in Scotland's Schools
Contributor
19/2/2026
The Council of Europe (External organisation)
Advisor
9/2/2026
International forum on the preservation and promotion of Indigenous and Minority Languages
Keynote/plenary speaker
9/2/2026
Cànanan a' lùghdachadh buaidh na h-aoise
Interviewee
11/11/2025

More professional activities

Projects

Technocamps Scotland: Coimpiutaireachd sa Ghàidhlig
Clift, Lee (Principal Investigator) Birnie, Inge (Co-investigator)
28-Jan-2025 - 28-Jan-2026
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
“Delivering 1 + 2 Languages” – pre-service teachers’ perspectives
De Britos, Angela (Co-investigator) Birnie, Inge (Principal Investigator)
This study aims to build on a previous study conducted by Birnie (2021) to evaluate the experiences and attitudes of new entrants to the teaching profession in Scotland towards languages in order to support these students’ pre-service provision in line with the latest Scottish Government short-life working group recommendations on the 1 + 2 policy. Furthermore, this study will aim to identify the attitudes of student teachers towards languages themselves; an important indicator of how they will conceptualise this in the classroom but also their perceived confidence and competence in different languages. Where teachers feel confident and competent in the delivery of a curricular area, they are more likely to be able to deliver this successfully (Valdera Gil & Crichton, 2020) and therefore any measures that can be taken to support student teachers pre-service will impact on the delivery of this area of the curriculum in primary schools. This will guide future development on the post- and under-graduate Initial Teacher Education Programmes and provide a valuable insight into the future support needs of early-career teachers.
01-Jan-2022
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

More projects

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Contact

Dr Ingeborg Birnie
Senior Lecturer
Strathclyde Institute of Education

Email: ingeborg.birnie@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 444 8088