The contemporary threat to minority languages and cultures: Civil society, young people and Celtic language use

I anticipate that this will be a 4* output for the following reasons:

a) It represents the first attempt to think more broadly about the role played by statutory and non-statutory education systems in promoting national identities. It takes the seminal work of Gellner on state education and nationalism, and augments it by drawing attention to the important role played by voluntary organisations in shaping the identities of a nation's youth. It also examines the way in which the existence of different languages (Welsh and English in Wales, Gaelic and English in Scotland) complicates the reproduction of nations within education.

b) It provides an important comparative study between Scotland and Wales of the link between education and national identity and, as such, acts as a valuable corrective to previous work, which tends to equate education in Britain with the English education system.

c) It will provide a highly nuanced geographical account of the role of education in shaping youth identities. In addition to focusing attention on the difference that devolution makes to education (and education makes to devolution), it will also demonstrate how understandings and performances of Welsh and Scottish identity vary from place to place within each country. In doing so, it will show how national identities are always refracted through local experiences.