Beiridh blàths air luaths

: revitalisation and technical transformation in the Dundee Gaelic scene

Abstract

This thesis is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Dundee on the East-Coast of Scotland, where I participated in the city’s local Gaelic scene, which is connected to the wider context of Gaelic revitalisation in Scotland. Through participating in the local Gaelic conversation group, Gaelic class, and Gaelic choir, as well as talking with various people with some connection to Gaelic in Dundee, I frame my ethnographic experience in the Dundee Gaelic Scene in relation to both the shifted frameworks of identity related to both Gaelic and Scottish nationalism, as well as to the wider dynamics of technical transformation rapidly altering the basis of human social organisation. Over the course of the chapters, this thesis investigates how the history of Gaelic in Dundee is being brought into the present and its future is being moulded. This includes looking at how the forms of continuity that mark Gaelic’s place in Dundee and contemporary Scotland are shifting dramatically away from instances of intergenerational or communal transmission towards technologically and digitally-mediated forms of transmission. This leads into questions of identity, looking at how ethnic, linguistic, and nationalistic notions of identity are being reformulated in relation to these technical transformations and how such reformulations are interconnected with the dynamics of Scottish national identity and other framings of identity. This is further connected with the larger context of technical transformation and the boundaries of the human, for instance through the development of AI, which is already reorganising the possibilities of language revitalisation and much else besides. Hence, this thesis seeks to contribute a detailed engagement with Gaelic in the city of Dundee along with focus on the technical transformations of modernity, offering insight into how these transformations are affecting a particular locality and the responses and trajectories emerging from that locality.

Date of Award	2 Dec 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Daniel Knight (Supervisor) & Stavroula Pipyrou (Supervisor)