Dr Nina Cnockaert-Guillou believes that her mother’s stories first sparked her love of Irish history.
Though Cnockaert-Guillou was raised in Normandy, she spent much of her childhood in Brittany where her mother’s family are from. Brittany has been classified as one of the Celtic nations because of how its language, history and traditions align with the other Celtic nations of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and the Isle of Man. Cnockaert-Guillou described a childhood spent immersed in Celtic culture and history.
“My mum would tell me the most amazing stories about King Arthur and things like that.”
This fascination with Celtic history brought Cnockaert-Guillou to a university in Paris, where she studied history. An interest in languages while at school meant that her English was proficient enough for her to go on exchange to an English-speaking country. Her first choice was University College Cork, as it offered classes in medieval and modern Irish for exchange students.
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“I actually didn’t know very much about Ireland or Irish Celtic history when I signed up to go on exchange. I knew that I loved Celtic history and languages and that this would be an opportunity to me to see if Irish history was something that I wanted to pursue.
“Once I started learning Irish, I just couldn’t stop there. The material in the classes really fascinated me. UCC is also a great campus to be a student.”
The staff at UCC noticed Cnockaert-Guillou’s enthusiasm and talent for languages and asked her if she was interested in applying for a master’s in medieval Irish literature there. She was.
“I had this fantastic lecturer at UCC who taught me old Irish from scratch and I was just so enthused by everything that I did.”
Ultimately it was Ireland’s incredible collection of medieval manuscripts which convinced Cnockaert-Guillou to specialise in Irish medieval history.
Though I have enjoyed living in Dublin I would prefer to live in Cork
“The manuscripts are really fascinating and beautiful, and the fact that there are so many texts just sitting there, which have either never been studied or not studied in hundreds of years, really intrigued me.”
After her master’s Cnockaert-Guillou secured funding to do a PhD at the University of Cambridge in medieval Irish. She traced the evolution of an Irish story first written down in the 12th century and repeated in manuscripts until the 19th century.
“I studied how the text was changed, why it was changed in these ways and where the new bits of the story were coming from. I was the first person ever to study this story and publish about it.”
The study of history can sometimes attract criticism for being “male, pale and stale”, both in terms of the people studying it and the how the records that survive nearly always centre on men.
“First of all you have to understand when you are studying the medieval period that that was just the way society was. I work on texts that are anonymous so while it is likely that they were written by men, we will never know for sure.
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“When reading a medieval manuscript you shouldn’t focus on the fact that they are mainly about men as it can detract from the fascinating material that’s there. There are characters who have survived hundreds of years and who I think that they would still make for brilliant characters if they were being written today. It would be a shame not to study these stories.
“Academia is still to some extent very male-dominated, and that won’t change unless more women come into the field and take up space. I have seen change happening though and I do think that we are going in the right direction.”
While Cnockaert-Guillou enjoyed her time at Cambridge, she always planned to move back to Ireland. “As I work on Ireland specifically, this is where most the jobs and work are.”
It was, however, more than work that brought Cnockaert-Guillou back to Ireland.
“It was pretty obvious from the start of my Erasmus exchange in Ireland that I was really happy here. My family at home could see it as well. I think that Irish people are really welcoming, lovely and easy to talk to.
“And it’s really not that far from France. It’s a very short flight so I have never felt that far from home.”
These days Cnockaert-Guillou is a postdoctoral scholar at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Fellows in their school of Celtic studies, where she began working after finishing her PhD. She hosts a podcast called Ní Hansae (“Not Difficult” in old Irish) where she interviews other scholars at the Dublin Institute and gets them to explain their area of research in simple terms.
“Though I have enjoyed living in Dublin I would prefer to live in Cork. I grew up in a small town so I am feel more comfortable in Cork city. There I can go nearly everywhere on foot and I kind of know where everything is. It was also the first place that I lived in Ireland so I will always have this affinity with Cork.”
In her spare time, Cnockaert-Guillou is working towards being fluent in modern Irish.
“For my master’s I worked more on Old Irish and during my PhD I worked mainly on medieval and early modern Irish, but throughout this time I have been learning modern Irish as well.
“I hope to get to a point in the next few years where I will be fully fluent in Irish but I am not there yet.”
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
