Dr. Cassandra Smith Christmas

PhD

Biography

Originally from Virginia in the US, Cassie received her PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2012 for her thesis on code-switching and language maintenance in a Gaelic-speaking family on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. From 2012-2016, Cassie was a research fellow for Soillse, the interuniversity Gaelic language research network, for the University of the Highlands and Islands. Part of this fellowship was spent at Lews Castle College on the Isle of Lewis and between 2014-2015, Cassie also held a fellowship at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, during which time she completed her monograph Family Language Policy: Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home (Palgrave, 2016). Other publications include articles in the Journal of Pragmatics; Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development; Current Issues in Language Planning; Language, Culture and Curriculum; and theInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language. Cassie is currently at the University of Limerick with a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the Irish Research Council to conduct a comparative study of Family Language Policy (FLP) in Scotland and Ireland.

Research Interests

Multilingualism; Language Shift and Maintenance; Family Language Policy; Minority Language Issues; Code-Switching; Language and Migration; New Speaker Issues; Pragmatics; Conversational Analysis

Professional Activities

Committee

2017 Foundation for Endangered Languages,

Award

2016 - Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship
2014 - Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities
2014 - British Association of Applied Linguistics/ Cambridge University Press Seminar Award

Association

2016 Coordinating Communications Officer, COST New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges

Employment

2012 University of the Highlands and Islands - Soillse Research Fellow

Education

2012 University of Glasgow - PhD
2007 Leiden University - MA
2006 College of William and Mary - Bachelor of Arts

Outreach

In 2014, I organised Là Fealla-Dhà/Gaelic Family Fun with Commun na Gàidhlig. This event was held at Lews Castle College, Stornoway, and was aimed at promoting the use of Gaelic in fun and family-centred activities.

I currently am one of the coordinators for the Migration and Asylum Network (MAN) within COST New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and Challenges.

Publications

Book

2016

Family Language Policy: Maintaining an Endangered Language in the Home
Smith-Christmas
DOI: 10.1057/9781137521811

Book Chapter

2017

Family Language Policy: New Directions
Smith-Christmas, Cassie
Family Language Policies in a Multilingual World Opportunities, Challenges, and Consequences

2015

Gaelic Scotland and Ireland: issues of class and diglossia in an evolving social landscape
Smith-Christmas, C and Ó hIfearnáin, T
Globalising Sociolinguistics Challenging and Expanding Theory DOI: 10.4324/9781315697826

2015

Voicing the other Code-switching in discourses of Gaelic language ideologies
Dunmore, S. and Smith-Christmas, C.
Language Variation - European Perspectives V: Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 7), Trondheim, June 2013 DOI: 10.1075/silv.17.07dun

2014

Code-Switching in Flannan Isles: A Micro-Interactional Approach to a Bilingual Narrative
Smith-Christmas
Sociolinguistics in Scotland DOI: 10.1057/9781137034717

2013

Stance and code-switching: Gaelic-English bilinguals on the Isles of Skye and Harris
Smith-Christmas, C
Language Variation - European Perspectives IV Selected papers from the Sixth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 6), Freiburg, June 2011 DOI: 10.1075/silv.14