Celtic and Scottish Studies Seminar Series: Will Lamb

About the speaker

Will Lamb completed a degree in Psychology from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1993 and spent two years as an RA on a Johns Hopkins led research project on sleep disorders and biometrics. In 1995, after taking an interest in Gaelic and traditional music, he went to Nova Scotia and spent an academic year at St Francis Xavier University.

Will began his postgraduate study at the University of Edinburgh in 1996, taking an MSc in Celtic Studies. His dissertation was on the development of the Gaelic news register and was supervised by Rob Ó Maolalaigh. He started a PhD in Linguistics the following year. In Jan 2000, nearing the end of his PhD, he moved to North Uist to take up a lecturing position at Lews Castle College Benbecula (University of the Highlands and Islands). He is credited with initiating the successful music programme at Lews Castle College. Will finished his PhD in 2002, and it was published in 2008 as 'Scottish Gaelic Speech and Writing: Register Variation in an Endangered Language'.

Will was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017 and to Personal Chair in Gaelic Ethnology and Linguistics in 2022. His research interests span music, linguistics, traditional narrative and language technology. He is known, in particular, for his work on formulaic language, traditional music, Gaelic grammatical description and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Most of his recent work has been in Gaelic NLP, and he recently finished an MSc in Speech and Language Processing (University of Edinburgh).

How to attend

Joining a seminar is free, and everyone is welcome. No booking is required.

All seminars take place online fortnightly on Fridays from 13.00 to 14.00. Please contact Dr Neill Martin to be added to the mailing list for an invitation, link and passcode.

About the Celtic and Scottish Studies Seminar Series

As the longest established department of its kind in Scotland, Celtic and Scottish Studies at Edinburgh is a major international hub for research, teaching and learning.

Each semester, we welcome a wide range of guest speakers and colleagues to present a lunchtime seminar on their work.

Are you interested in Celtic and Scottish Studies?

We offer a range of undergraduate degrees in Celtic, Scottish Ethnology and Scottish Studies. We also offer a number of postgraduate research programmes drawing on excellent supervision and access to world-leading collections and archives.