Halò! Is mise Rebecca Madlener agus tha mi san treasamh bliadhna den PhD agam aig Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, colaiste na Gàidhlig san Eilean Sgitheanach. Na bu thràithe sa bhliadhna seo, chuir mi seachad sia mìosan air greis-gnìomachais cuide ri Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba. Bha mi ag obair pàirt-ùine, a’ dèanamh rannsachadh agus a’ sgaoileadh fiosrachadh air na meadhanan sòisealta aca.

Hi everyone! I am Rebecca and I am currently in the third year of my SGSAH-funded PhD at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye. Earlier this year, I spent 6 months doing an internship with Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba (AÀA) ~ Gaelic Place-names of Scotland. I worked with them part-time, doing research and contributing to their research dissemination through regular activity on their social media. As a SGSAH-funded researcher, I had the opportunity to create my own bespoke internship, which allowed me to tailor the internship to the host organisations needs, as well as to my own existing strengths and development needs – and all that in a Gaelic-speaking workplace. Abair cothrom!

Ciamar a chaidh dhomh?

How did it go? Overall, the internship was a great experience that gave me insight into a potential field of future employment. I really enjoyed being able to manage my own time and having multiple different tasks to switch between to keep my brain engaged. Throughout the internship, I felt like my input and suggestions were valued and it was really motivating to see the positive impact that my work made to AÀA’s research efforts.

Carson an do rinn mi pàirt-ùine e?

Why did I do my internship part-time? My supervisor recommend that I do the internship part-time to allow me to continue working on my own research alongside the internship, rather than taking three months off from own work. And I’m really glad I did the internship part-time. It allowed me to start implementing newly developed skills and ideas into my own research straight away, which was hugely beneficial to my PhD research.

I did, however, struggle a bit in the beginning with going from my full-time PhD research to splitting my time between my PhD and something else. I am a creature of habit and changing my established routine is always a slow process. I felt like I wasn’t making quick enough progress on my PhD research anymore – as measured by my full-time research expectations that were of course no longer achievable. But this feeling went away after a few weeks, once I had gotten used to my new routine. In fact, getting a mental change of scenery for a couple of days a week felt quite nice. The work on my PhD days became more focussed because I had spent a couple of days doing something else earlier in the week.

Doing the internship part-time also gave me time to make connections between the research I was doing for AÀA and my own research and the two regularly informed each other. The research I did for AÀA focussed on settlement names on the Isle of Skye and my PhD looks at Gaelic words for coastal landscape features, using the Isle of Skye as my study area and place-names as one of my sources of evidence. I regularly ended my two weekly workdays for AÀA with a list of things to look into with regards to my PhD research and vice versa.

Dè fhuar mi às?

What did I get out of the internship? The short answer: A lot! The longer answer:

• Sgilean rannsachaidh ~ research skills: One of my main aims for the internship had been to develop and improve my research skills. Place-names are an important source of evidence for my PhD research, but I had not previously done much academic work with them. Throughout the internship, I independently conducted research on place-names and then discussed it with Dr Jake King, AÀA’s researcher. This regular discussions greatly improved my understanding of the place-names I was researching.

• Cothroman gus an rannsachadh agam a sgaoileadh ~ opportunities to share my research: Another big part of the internship was research dissemination. This mostly took the form of creating regular posts for AÀA’s social media sites (Facebook, Bluesky) to share all the great work they do. But I also had the opportunity to write regular blog posts in Gaelic. I was free to choose any topic for those blog posts, giving me the opportunity to, for instance, write about my own research (e.g. looking at the meaning of the place-name elements geodha and òb) or write a short piece about the rabbit hole I spent half a research day in (e.g. a post about the names of the islands in Loch Dunvegan, based on me fascinatedly staring at Blaeu’s 1654 map of the Isle of Skye for way longer than I probably should have).

Blaeu’s map of the Isle of Skye (1654). Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

• Eòlas-obrach ~ work experience: It probably sounds pretty obvious, but the internship also provided me with great work experience. This includes experience working in a research environment, but also experience in knowledge dissemination and working with the back-end of a database. Doing the internship in a Gaelic-speaking workplace was great, because it allowed me to develop my professional skills, while also getting to actively practice my Gaelic and contribute to the amount of research that is shared tro mheadhan na Gàidhlig.

Faclan mu dheireadh?

Any last words? The internship was a great development opportunity and I would highly recommend doing one.

Mholainn-sa greis-gnìomachais do dh’oileanach sam bith. ’S e cothrom air leth a th’ ann!

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Rebecca is a third-year SGSAH-funded PhD student at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig / the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her research looks at the semantics of Gaelic words for coastal landscape features in the language today and throughout the language’s history and what they tell us about how past and present Gaelic speakers perceive(d) the landscape and live(d) in and with it.