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My life encouraging young people

My earlier career in school teaching, devoted to Special education (Dumfries, Glasgow and Kingussie), taught me the importance of childhood experience and learning. I am interested in encouraging young people to learn through the exploration of culture and tradition. Songs, storytelling, music-making and dance form an essential part of this. Since I believe childhood development shapes our adult lives, I continue to maintain contact with children of all ages. Short projects lasting between one day and several weeks have been devised to encourage children (and teachers) to cultivate an interest in Scottish Tradition and to learn from a wide range of experiences.

Current Position:

Lecturer in Folklore at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow (attached to the Glasgow-Strathclyde School of Scottish Studies). Other guest lectures have included: Strathclyde University (Scottish Tourism); University of the Highlands and Islands (campuses in Skye and Orkney); University College, Dublin (Department of Folklore).

Past Position:

Former tenured lectureship at the University of Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies (1984-1995). Specialization Folklore and Scottish Ethnology. Prepared and taught honours courses in: Custom and Belief, Traditional Medicine, Traditional Song (Scots), and Childlore. Supervised post-graduate research and acted as 'reader' of Master and Ph.D. degrees. External examiner at other universities

Guest lectures outside UK and Ireland:

The University of Cape Breton, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Folklore Dept), St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia (Celtic Dept), Warren Wilson College, Asheville, N.C. (semester residency and participation in their World Wide Program), Adjunct professor in Folklore Berkeley University, California (Folklore Dept.), Harvard (Dept. of Celtic), Boston College (Music Dept), York University, Toronto (Music Dept.), East Tennessee State University, (Centre for Appalachian Studies)

Scotland's greatest folklorist Hamish Henderson writes:

	"There can be few scholars on either side of the Atlantic who succeed in combining such a wide range of skills as Margaret Bennett. A folksinger of great sensitivity and versatility, she is undoubtedly one of the major figures of the modern Scottish Revival... Margaret embodies all that is best of the spirit of Scotland".

From Swannanoa Gathering summer-school, North Carolina:

Margaret Bennett has sung at folk festivals and concerts world-wide and, as one of the world's foremost authorities on Scottish Folklore, she features in several films, TV documentaries and on radio. Margaret has an MA in Folklore and a PhD in Ethnology and currently holds an honorary Research Fellowship at the University of Glasgow School of Scottish and Celtic Studies. A prize-winning author, she has published several books and articles.