Dr. Maggie Scott
School of Arts and Media
Current positions
Associate Dean Academic (Quality Assurance and Enhancement)
BIOGRAPHY
As Associate Dean Academic (Quality Assurance and Enhancement) I support Programme Leaders, Academic Leads, and Directors across the School to develop new degree programmes and improve our current portfolio. I also liaise with colleagues across the University, particularly in the Quality Enhancement Office, Marketing Team, Timetabling and Estates to assist in both the academic and practical delivery of our programmes and modules. Since I arrived at Salford as a Lecturer in 2008, I have held a range of roles in the School of Arts Media and Creative Technologies, including Admissions Tutor, Assessments Officer, Chair of Taught Ethics, Module Leader, Programme Leader and Associate Director. Research-led teaching has always been central to my work in Higher Education, and I continue to supervise students in the key areas of research in which I regularly publish.
Before coming to Salford in 2008, I worked as a historical lexicographer for ten years, originally for the Historical Thesaurus of English at the University of Glasgow, then the Oxford English Dictionary at Oxford University Press, and latterly for Scottish Language Dictionaries (SLD) in Edinburgh. In 2005, I established the ongoing regular weekly newspaper column, ‘Scots Word of the Week’, for SLD, published in the Scottish broadsheet The Herald, and wrote it for three years (2005-2008). While based in Scotland, I taught at several academic institutions including the English Language Department at the University of Glasgow; the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland); and the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies. My PhD at the University of Glasgow analysed place-names of Old English, Norse and Scots origin in the south of Scotland, and I was editor of Nomina, the journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland for six years (2008-2013).
Areas of research
Lexicography, Onomastics, Scots Language, Scottish Literature, English Language
I supervise students in a variety of areas of language and literature, including the historical and modern lexicography of English and Scots; name studies (onomastics); dialectal, slang and non-standard English; the Scots language and modern Scots literature.
My current research is divided between several areas of focus. My PhD focused on the origins and history of Scottish place-names, and I have continued to publish in this field, becoming increasingly interested in critical approaches to place-names and their perception. I am a member of the Editorial Board for Onoma, the Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, and for Names, the Journal of the American Name Society. I have also worked on topics related to the Scots Language more generally, with many of my research publications developing from my lexicographical work with Scottish Language Dictionaries (SLD) [link: http://www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk/], the current custodians of the Dictionary of the Scots Language [link: https://dsl.ac.uk/]. I am interested in all of the contexts in which Scots is currently used, particularly in the wake of Scottish devolution, and have published on the uses of Scots in contemporary literature. Having worked both for the Oxford English Dictionary [link: http://www.oed.com] and SLD as an editor for several years, I continue to pursue lexicographical research, building on my previous experience working for the two major historical dictionaries of English and Scots; at present, I am developing the project website Beard’s Trove [link: https://www.beardstrove.org/] to examine the unpublished manuscript dictionary of ‘Arms, Armour and Costume’, compiled by Charles Relly Beard.
Qualifications
- MA (Hons) English Language and Literature, University of Glasgow (1997)
- PhD Linguistics, University of Glasgow (2004)
- Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, University of Salford (2010)
Memberships
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2010-)
- Member of the English Association, Member of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Member of the Modern Language Association, Member of the Dictionary Society of North America, Member of the professional society for Teachers of Old English In Britain and Ireland, Member of the Scottish Place-Name Society, Member of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, Member of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies