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Aberdeen University Celtic Society

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                   Many people are not aware of the historic and current presence of Gaelic in the North-East of Scotland. In fact, there was an Aberdeenshire Gaelic dialect in existence until 1984. The University of Aberdeen has been a central hub for Gaelic for much of its existence as an institution. Students have come to study Gaelic from the Gàidhealtachd, as well as from across the world. The Celtic Society was formed both by students from Celtic backgrounds, and by those who had taken an interest in the Celtic languages and cultures.          The Celtic Society is one of the oldest societies at the University, and was once the largest. The large number of Gaels coming to study at the University helped the society to thrive and grow in membership. It is difficult to say when the society first began, as students from Gaelic backgrounds had already been meeting together as a group due to their shared culture, but officially the society was founded in 1853. Gaelic has been taugh
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The Brittany Movie Archive | Gwarez Filmoù

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This blog post is based on the information provided by the Brittany Movie Archive , my personal knowledge, and the interview given a few months ago by Marie Carrez to the Cinémathèque du documentaire, on her suggestion. Said interview is available here , in French. I would like to thank Marie Carrez once again for her help and diligence in organising the screening for the conference. Still from “ Purée géante à Brest ” [litt. Giant mashed potatoes in Brest], amateur movie from Daniel Jacolot, 1986 freely available here . Do you recognize Brest’s main square? For those of you who came to our last conference, you may have attended the screening of a documentary titled “ Americans in Brest in 1917 ”. Made by the Brittany Movie Archive, it presents archives shot by the Sammies themselves stationed in Brest during the First World War, sources that were not largely available in France before. While it may seem a bit far from our usual fields of work in Celtic studies, it’s a an important par
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Using IIIF on ISOS and other repositories of digitised manuscripts

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This month, I will give you a quick overview of how to view manuscript images online using the (now standard) International Image Interoperability Framework ( IIIF , pronounced ‘triple-i F’). Though the name may sound scary, there is really no reason to be afraid! For the more technologically enclined amongst you, I would recommend checking out the IIIF website to find out more about how it works, as well as any news and events happening. For everyone else, all you need to know is that IIIF enables you to view and interact with images on a web browser in more ways than a browser can allow on its own (e.g. deep zoom, comparison, colour changes etc). And on top of that, more and more universities and libraries now use it to display their digitised objects, so it’s extremely useful to know how to make the most of its functionalities. There are two “technical” elements you should know about when using IIIF: Image viewer : this is the software that allows viewing and manipulation of image
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History and Archaeology: why we need an interdisciplinary approach to the past

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Something I’ve noticed in my short academic career is the way that certain fields can become rather insular, and coming from a bit of an interdisciplinary background I’ve seen this as a bit of a problem: back when I was doing my undergrad, I majored in Medieval Studies -- a bit of a catch-all term that included literature, religion, history, and (to a much smaller extent at my university) archaeology.  I see interdisciplinary approaches rather necessary to be able to understand the past. Despite archaeology being the smallest part of Medieval Studies at my university, it is what really spoke to me, because it felt so much more concrete, and when I continued on into my Masters I jumped into the discipline.  To quote the esteemed archaeologist Indiana Jones “archaeology is the search for facts”, and often those facts seemed more real: in a course with a more traditional Celtic Studies focus I might read the Táin Bó Cúailnge (or any other saga) and engage with the papers on papers about
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