Henry angest biography

Dr Anne Lorne Gillies

Anne Lorne Gillies was raised in Argyll and educated at the Universities of Edinburgh (English, Celtic and Music) and Glasgow (PhD: Education). She has an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh. She began singing as a child, winning the Gold Medal at the National Mòd when only 17, which led on to a high-profile television career throughout the UK. An impassioned campaigner for the continued development of Gaelic language and culture, she was in the forefront of the campaign to establish Gaelic-medium education – as parent / activist, Patron of the Gaelic Playgroup Association, National Education Officer of Comann na Gàidhlig and Gaelic Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde. She has also written and produced TV programmes for both BBC and Scottish Television (including the multi-media learning programme “Speaking our language”) and published many books and articles, including twelve Gaelic children’s novels. Her most recent work is “Songs of Gaelic Scotland”.

As someone engaged in asking questions about land and its ownership, I have always been aware of the paucity of academic study of land tenure and ownership. That striking absence has, in part, motivated my ongoing investigations. So it was with a sense of anticipation that I noted some years ago that the Centre of Mountain Studies at Perth College/UHI was to undertake research into landed estates in Scotland. A project entitled Sustainable Estates for the 21st Century began in 2007 with the overall aim of “integrating the concept of sustainability into the management of large, upland estates in Scotland”.

My interest, however, quickly faded when I learned that the research programme was not acutally going to query the legitimacy of the current division of land or its ownership but merely investigate how they can be made more “sustainable”. This line of inquiry takes the rational and existence of such landholdings as a given. Now universities are perfectly entitled to pursue what questions they deem appropriate. But sometimes it is worth asking why academics ask the questions they do. In particular, who is funding the research.

Before we proceed any further let me make it clear that I am not calling into question the academic rigour or q

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