Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR); adult learners; transformative learning; work-based language learning; Language Coaching; Advising in Language Learning (ALL); Irish language, minority languages, language policy and organisational change; positive institutions, language (in)security; language networks; new speakers; problem-based learning; language teacher education, and the life and work of Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha, An Seabhac.

My training as a Knowledge for Change (K4C) mentor in 2019 and my involvement in the UNESCO Knowledge for Change (K4C) initiative at UL have triggered an interest in arts-based research methods also.

The title of my doctoral thesis was Minority Language Learning in the Workplace: Contextual Practices, Relational Knowing, Mandate, and Change. I proposed a framework of language advising for the mandated and minority language context in this work. I also mapped the spatial and contextual practices of members of a Language Support Network, a Network which I established as a forum to explore issues of language anxiety in the professional context. The findings of this Participatory Action Research (PAR) study inform my current practice in designing language support initiatives at Aonad na Gaeilge, UL. They have also informed the development of a UL microcredential on Language Coaching in the Workplace.

I have recently coordinated BLÁTHÚ, a PAR project entitled An Rannpháirtíocht Phobail, Líonrú agus an Tacaíocht Teanga do Nuachainteoirí na Gaeilge i bpobail lasmuigh den Ghaeltacht [Public Engagement, Networking and Language Support for New Speakers of Irish in Communities outside of An Ghaeltacht].

Since June 2024 I am leading a research project called 'Language Coaching: Contexts and Practice'.

Irish Language, Advising in Language Learning (ALL); Language Coaching in the Workplace; Community-Based Participatory Research and Practice;  Psychology of Language Learning; Language Pedagogy, Language and Culture in the Classroom, Sociolinguistics, Language Awareness

Dr. Deirdre Ní Loingsigh, Stiúrthóir na Gaeilge, Ollscoil Luimnigh is the Director of Aonad na Gaeilge, the Irish Language Centre, at the University of Limerick. She is Course Director of the Dioplóma sa Ghaeilge Fheidhmeach programme and she also leads the Gaeilge strand on the Professional Master of Education (Languages). She teaches on language pedagogy and applied Irish modules.  She is the course developer, lecturer, and module coordinator of the UL MicroCredential Language Coaching in the Workplace

She is a Knowledge for Change (K4C) Mentor with UL Engage having completed the Mentor Training Programme at the University of Victoria, Canada and she currently leads the Languages and Culture portfolio at the Knowledge for Change (K4C) UNESCO Hub in Limerick.  

Her early career teaching Physical Education and Irish, and her background in the disciplines of History and Local Studies, and Folklore inform her teaching, research, and engagement activities. Before joining UL as a member of Faculty in 2001, she taught at GMIT (Castlebar Campus) and worked with Meitheal Mhaigh Eo Teo, the Area Based Partnership for Co. Mayo, on a rural development initiative in the Erris Gaeltacht.   She has led many innovations and projects relating to Irish language support, advising, promotion and pedagogy over the last twenty years.

More recently, in her role as K4C Mentor, she has led the design and production of COMHRÁ, a teaching and learning resource on Community-Based Participatory Research. This ten-part video vignette series was produced for UL Engage/K4C Hub in 2021.  

She has been actively involved in the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) Language for Work project since 2017 and in October 2021 she was the Irish coordinator of the ECML Training and Consultancy two-day event for member states (Language for Work: Supporting Work-Related Second Language Learning).