Aengus Finnegan

Research interests include: Irish placenames, surnames, and personal names; folklore; and the historical dialectology and sociolinguistic heritage of the Irish language in central Ireland. Ainmeolaíocht na Gaeilge, canúineolaíocht, béaloideas, stair na Gaeilge i lár na tíre. 

External Supervisor: Justin Ó Gliasáin: 'A study of the microtoponymy of the baronies of Offaly East and Offaly West, Co. Kildare.' Fiontar and; Scoil na Gaeilge, Dublin City University. Current PhD student (Sept. 2017-). 2017-18: 6 FYP students.

I have been working at the University of Limerick since 2015, and was appointed Lecturer in Irish in September 2016.  I teach courses on Irish literature and language from 1600 to the present, including: modern Irish grammar, onomastics, early-modern prose literature in Irish, dialectology, Gaeltacht literature, the Schools' Folklore Collection 1937-8, and; Celtic Civilisation.  My current research is focused on historical language shift and bilingualism in Ireland. I am also investigating the origins and development of 1350 townland names in Co. Westmeath, a study provisionally titled 'Language in the landscape'. I am coordinator of the Westmeath Field Names Recording Project. From 2013 to 2015 I was employed in Fiontar, the Irish-language unit of Dublin City University. I worked as a Research Editor on a number of Irish-language and folklore digitisation projects, and as Project Coordinator of Logainm.ie, The Placenames Database of Ireland. BA (International) in Irish and Geography, NUI Galway (2007). Awarded a National Lottery research bursary by the Department of Arts, Heritage and; the Gaeltacht (2007-2011) to undertake doctoral research on the townland names of Co. Westmeath (PhD in Modern Irish, NUI Galway, 2012).