Odin's Eye Blog

Professor Mairéad Nic Craith from the University of the Highlands and Islands Institute for Northern Studies will deliver the annual public lecture titled “Irish and Ecology: How Language Enhances Empathy with the Environment” at Queen’s University Belfast on April 29th at 18:00.

The presentation considers the potential role of Irish Gaelic in promoting sustainability. It explores the traditional ecological knowledge as well as the relational bond with nature that is encoded in the Gaelic language. Drawing on arguments by Michael Cronin, Greg Toner, Lillis Ó Laoire, Nessa Cronin and others, Mairéad’s lecture will highlight how Irish Gaelic can influence how people interact with and care for the natural world. Focusing on concepts such as dúchas and dinnshenchas, she will examine how narrative traditions carry environmental memory. Her argument is approached from the perspective of environmental humanities. The lecture is open to academics in the university as well as the wider public, and addresses issues of identity, strategy and policy as related to the Irish language.

Mairéad Nic Craith is Professor of Public Folklore at the University of the Highlands and Islands Institute for Northern Studies. She is  an editor of Creative Perspectives on Sustainable Nature-Culture Relationships: Beyond the Anthropocene, which will be published by Routledge in July 2026.

Mairéad’s lecture builds on the Routledge book which aims to develop a new understanding of the cultural relationships of humans with nature through heritage and tradition. The book examines ways of transforming these relationships sustainably and assesses the impact on policy-related actions for ecologically embedded futures, drawing particularly on case studies from the European north. Along with Mairéad, the co-editors of the book are Ullrich Kockel, Professor of Creative Ethnology at INS, Riina Haanpää, Associate Professor in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Turku, and Katriina Siivonen, Associate Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies and University Lecturer in Futures Studies at University of Turku, Finland.

Mairéad has previously held chairs at Heriot-Watt and Ulster Universities. She was a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Celtic department in the Spring semester of 2018. Author of seven monographs and sole/ joint editor of eleven collections, Mairéad’s most recent monograph is The Vanishing World of the Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia (2020). Her current research focuses on environmental aspects of Irish-Gaelic mythology and folklore. Focusing on intangible cultural heritage and traditional ecological knowledge, she explores the potential of the Gaelic tradition to augment sustainable development. Her aim is to encourage the rethinking of sustainability as a human-ecological concept and to examine how the Gaelic tradition and its rooted relationships with nature may create policy-oriented pathways towards cultural sustainability transformation.

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