Elphinstone Institute

28/05/2026

Many thanks to our own Director, Tom McKean, whose David Buchan Lecture at the University of Aberdeen yesterday was a splendid overview of the concepts of community and culture in our everyday lives, also demonstrating the significance of reciprocal fieldwork when working with communities.

If you missed the lecture, never fear, as it is available to watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLBzex2TSjY.

Thank you as well to our postgraduate students for their support in setting up and tidying and to Martin Hardie and Chris Surgenor from the media services team for recording. Finally, thank you to Highland Fine Cheeses for so kindly donating a delicious array of cheeses which fueled the enthusiastic discussion after the lecture.

26/05/2026

We have some very exciting news - The Friends of the Elphinstone Institute have a new online home!

Visit the new website at www.elphinstonefriends.org

From vibrant festivals and conferences to musical gatherings, open evenings, and our vital Doric language initiatives—the Friends are at the centre of our public outreach work. They support our staff, bring our events to life, and help us in celebrating the culture and traditions of Northern Scotland and beyond.

Want to get involved?

For just £20 a year, you can join the Friends and directly support this wonderful work.

Visit the new website to explore our supported activities and find out how you can play a part:

🌐 www.elphinstonefriends.org

University of Aberdeen LLMVC

25/05/2026

Why does culture matter? Who defines its value? How does community knowledge and experience help shape more confident, sustainable, and democratic futures?

Join us for our annual David Buchan Lecture, David Buchan Lecture, Wednesday, 27 May 2026, 5.30pm, where our very own director Thomas McKean will consider these questions and many more by discussing his own fieldwork experiences in Scotland, the United States, and Guatemala.

Book your free place: [email protected]. Followed by a reception with Scottish produce.

22/05/2026

There are still a few places left on the Ballad Bus Outing on Saturday, 30 May (9.30am departure), organised by the Friends of the Elphinstone Institute.

Tickets are £15/£13 for Friends. We'll be taking a coach round the North-East to learn about and celebrate the stories and locations connected to the region’s celebrated traditional ballads. The bus will have plenty of brilliant singers, and this will be a most enjoyable way to learn about local traditional song. No doubt we'll be singing with more emotion this year, remembering Ian Russell (pictured singing during the James Madison Carpenter Collection bus outing in 2017).

20/05/2026

Doric Development Wirker Charley Buchan visited the 1st Cults Brownies iss wik an he wis affa impressed wi the quines existin knowledge o Doric and the passion for Doric o volunteer Emma Anderson.

The quines agreed ti hae a go at makkin a badge for the new Guides Doric Badge that the Institute his developed.

20/05/2026

Have a look at this brilliant online seminar series for minority languages, organised with our PhD student Claire Needler, whose own research is to do with Doric bilingualism in North-East schools. You can look forward to Grandma Griggly seashore crafts, Jackie Ross from Doric Books, and many more interesting speakers.

The Language Intervention Networking seminar series showcases community practitioners working to support minority and community languages across the UK. Each seminar has a different theme, and features a panel discussion followed by time for Q&A. Register via Eventbrite.

https://brnw.ch/21x2ATp

Organised by the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, these seminars provide an opportunity for language practitioners to network and share their learning with colleagues in different language contexts, as well as policy makers and academics. The seminars will be recorded, edited, and put online to become a learning resource for a wider audience.

19/05/2026

Our annual David Buchan Lecture will be next Wednesday, 27 May, 5.30pm. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Elphinstone Institute, the speaker for this year's Buchan Lecture will be Director of the Elphinstone Institute, Dr Thomas McKean.

Book your free place by contacting [email protected]

Culture is with us all the time, shaping our daily lives and helping us make sense of the world around us. While heritage is often seen as the past, something to be preserved or revived, it always informs the present and can be harnessed to help build community and self-esteem. Dr Thomas McKean explores how a folklorist’s ‘culture work’ moves beyond observation and into action, making us into activists. He will look at how the ethos of the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen – founded to build bridges between the University and the wider community – can enhance cultural confidence, community self-esteem, and cultural equity, particularly in relation to communities whose voices and knowledge have often been marginalised. His case studies include the Institute’s Doric language work over the last ten years, as well as his fieldwork exploring the transformative power of heritage craft skills in boatbuilding projects for young people in Portsoy and New York City, and his collaborations with Tz’utujil Maya communities in Guatemala, where environmental knowledge, traditional beliefs, and textile practices are mobilized in response to both cultural erosion and the climate crisis. At its heart, the Institute’s work is about cultural equity: why culture matters, who defines its value, and how community knowledge and experience can help shape more confident, sustainable, and democratic futures.

18/05/2026

Join us on Thursday, 21 May, 6.30pm, MacRobert MR051, for our final public lecture of the academic year. We are delighted to be hosting Dr Farah Aboubakr whose talk is entitled 'Fighting Forgetfulness: Palestinian Folktales and Memory Development'. The talk is free and no booking is required.

Palestinian folktales are tools for cultural resistance and Palestinian female storytellers have played a crucial role in safeguarding Palestinian cultural and national memory. This talk explores the idea of how Palestinian popular culture, through oral literature, is a foundational means for negotiating power and resistance, social interaction, and identity. Through careful investigation of Palestinian folktales and the role of female storytellers, the talk unpacks the ways in which folktales frame Palestinian cultural identity, by looking at how peasantry, food, and religion narratives in folktales activate memory across generations.

Farah Aboubakr is a Lecturer in Arabic at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She joined the university in 2013 and since then has been involved in teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fields of Arabic language, culture and literature, Middle Eastern, and Translation Studies. She has been actively engaged in research within the fields of Palestine Studies, Arabic Literature and Popular Culture, Post-colonial, Memory, and Cultural Studies.

17/05/2026

We're profoundly saddened by the news that our friend and former director, Emeritus Professor Ian Russell MBE, passed away this weekend. It's difficult in a social media post to say all the things that Ian was to so many different people. As director of the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, he initiated or supported countless festivals and community engagement projects including the Boaties Project, the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention, Button Boxes & Moothies, the Cullerlie Traditional singing weekend, the Polish-Scottish Song Group, and countless more. He hired Stanley Robertson to lead the innovative 'Oral and Cultural Traditions of Scottish Travellers' project and made deep community connections between the Institute and the broader region.

Ian was one of the great fieldworkers, and many people will remember him with recording machine in hand, documenting, for example, the Temperance walks in Cairnbulg, Inverallochy, and St Combs, or recording public events, sessions, Burns Suppers, and much more. He was perhaps most famous for documenting, supporting, and writing about the rich carolling traditions of the Pennines for half a century.

For our staff and students, Ian was a constant source of enthusiasm and a model for ethical fieldwork, working with communities to create long-term sustainable partnership models. We will miss Ian greatly, and would like to express our condolences to his wife Norma, who was ever-present by Ian's side, and a key part of almost all of the projects listed above (and many more). We also express our condolences to Joe Russell (Ian and Norma's son) and Tomas Russell (their grandson), about both of whom Ian would speak with great pride.

We'll be singing songs in Ian's memory tonight and for many nights to come.

14/05/2026

Our senior lecturer, Frances Wilkins, was down at Newcastle University's School of Arts and Culture last week speaking at the conference, 'Music, Crisis, Memory: An International Interdisciplinary Conference'. Researchers attended from across Europe and beyond to engage with this important topic.

Frances spoke about her work with singers recording experiences of loss in the Gaelic psalm singing tradition, both in the past and the present.