A Hebridean Folklore Macroscope: 170 years of Gaelic oral culture in the Outer Hebrides

Supervised by Sabhal Mòr Ostaig’s Dr Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart and Prof. Hugh Cheape, and the Director of Tobar an Dualchais Floraidh Forrest, the project will bring new ethnographical approaches and cutting-edge scholarship to bear upon the rich Gaelic oral heritage made available online by Tobar an Dualchais, Scotland’s digitised folklore and oral history resource.

The successful candidate will analyse and unlock Tobar an Dualchais’ rich collection of Gaelic-language folklore and song recordings from the Outer Hebrides, contextualising them within a corpus of orally-derived material from the same areas stretching over 170 years, from John Francis Campbell’s pioneering collection projects to the present day.

The project will investigate recordings from two contrasting but comparable localities: the island of Eriskay and the adjoining ‘mainland’ of the South End of South Uist, and the island of Berneray. Combining detailed case studies focusing upon individual items, genres, and informants and their genealogical connections, with wide-ranging, time-deep perspectives, the project will enable folklore to illustrate the islands’ history, cultural patterns and trends, and demographic and environmental contexts.

The candidate will work closely with the communities where recordings were made and will contribute to Tobar an Dualchais’ programme of outreach and community engagement, through public talks; blogs; articles in local publications; and media appearances.

This PhD project offers an exceptional opportunity for a promising researcher to develop their academic skills in the rich Gaelic environment at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig UHI, while gaining valuable training and experience working with one of Scotland’s most important oral heritage resources and the communities it represents.