Greg Toner

Greg Toner is a pioneer in digital scholarship in Celtic Studies. He is director of the AHRC-funded eDIL project and has led the digitisation and development of the dictionary of Old and Middle Irish (www.dil.ie) which is now a central resource in medieval Irish studies. He led a Leverhulme-funded project on the use of computational methods for the dating of medieval texts which explored machine learning methods to assist in the dating of early Irish texts.

His books include a critical edition of the Middle-Irish text, Bruiden Da Choca (‘Da Coca’s Hostel’) and two volumes in the Place-Names of Northern Ireland series. His other research focusses primarily on early Irish literature and he has published in Ériu, Éigse, and Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies. He is particularly interested in Gaelic historiography, heroic saga and the reception of myth.

Greg previously lectured in Celtic Studies in the Department of Welsh in the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and in Irish at the University of Ulster. He was appointed Professor of Irish Language and Literature in 2006 there before moving to Queen’s as Professor of Irish in 2011.

He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College. He is chair of the management committee of the Royal Irish Academy’s Foclóir Stairiúil na Caeilge and is Honorary General Editor of the Irish Texts Society.

Greg has taught a wide variety of courses in Irish language and literature. He currently teaches Modern Irish poetry, medieval Irish literature, and Celtic mythology.

He is interested in language teaching and developed the interactive online Irish-language exercises, CAPAILL, which are widely used by school and university students. He established and directed the Centre for Excellence in Multimedia Language Learning in Coleraine with funding from the Department for Employment and Learning.

He has been external examiner at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork.