De Bhaldraithe Centre

De Bhaldraithe Centre for Irish Scholarship

The De Bhaldraithe Centre for Irish Scholarship was established in 2008 in the then School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folkore and Linguistics to address the increasing need for trained professionals in the following Modern Irish sectors: Irish language media and journalism, editing and copy-editing, administration, legal translation, interpreting and general translation.

The Centre focusses primarily on enhancing the students' language accuracy, both in the spoken and written language, while also developing their critical analysis skills, in order to prepare them for 21st Century Irish language careers. These include translation, editing, work as lawyer-linguists both in Ireland and the European Union and the teaching of Irish both in Ireland and abroad under the Fulbright and Ireland-Canada University Fund schemes.

These areas of expertise are the focus of the Centre's teaching strategy in the MA/Dioplóma Iarchéime: Scríobh agus Cumarsáid [MA/Post-Graduate Diploma in Irish Writing and Communications]. In addition to this, the Centre pursues research on Modern Irish with an emphasis on the specialised language skills in the various sectors mentioned above.

The De Bhaldraithe Centre for Irish Scholarship has been running the public Ó Thrácht go Twitter [From Tract to Twitter] lecture series since 2013. Listen to past lectures on our Lecture and Seminar Series page.

The current Director of the De Bhaldraithe Centre is Assistant Professor Cathal Billings.