Kirsty McKellar is a doctoral researcher at the University of Highlands and Islands, Scotland, based at the Language Sciences Institute. Her work is in minority language protection and promotion, centred around Gaelic crofting and fishing communities on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, an island off the Westcoast of Scotland. She is interested in traditional knowledge systems, the intergenerational community transmission of knowledge and culture through language, and the very real-life implications of their endangerment. She works for Kindred, an international nonprofit organization that builds social and emotional well-being using a community development approach. Since concluding her Master of Development Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2020, Kirsty has supported collaborative research in remote First Nations communities in Australia, as well as internationally, for example, in India. This includes through her current role as a consultant for Community Works, an evidence-based social development group with a presence in Australia, Europe and Latin America. Kirsty has worked at the University of Melbourne, teaching in the Master of Development Studies program and coordinating multiple University of Melbourne initiatives, including the repatriation-centred study visit for a delegation of Indigenous Naga researchers and peacebuilders, and the Faculty of Arts initiative ‘Leading Together’ from 2021-2024.
