New Perspectives on Ruaraidh Erskine’s Gaelic Magazines and Translation Activities
12 May 2025, 2.30-4.30pm, Hebdomadar’s room
The talk will explore the Scottish and international networks that formed around the Gaelic magazines edited and supported by Ruaraidh Erskine in the 1900s – 1930s, including Gaelic circles in Scotland and London, Scottish nationalist politics, visual arts, pan-Celtic initiatives, including extensive contacts with Ireland, and the global Gaelic diaspora. In particular, it will focus on translation activities associated with the magazines – from a number of European languages into Gaelic, and from Gaelic into English. It will introduce the new bilingual (English/Gaelic) website (https://erskine.glasgow.ac.uk/) that maps the magazines and their contents, and offers a growing database of contributors, and suggests ways in which it can facilitate future research on Gaelic literature and culture of the early twentieth century.
Petra Johana Poncarová is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Glasgow. She serves as secretary of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures and is one of the co-directors of Ionad Eòghainn MhicLachlainn | National Centre for Gaelic Translation.
Her monograph Derick Thomson and the Gaelic Revival has been published by Edinburgh University Press in 2024. Her Scotnote Study Guide on Derick Thomson’s Gaelic poetry appeared in 2020 (Association for Scottish Literature).