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Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to the Celts-speaking peoples (i.e. speakers of Celtic languages). This ranges from linguistics, literature and art history, archaeology and history, the focus lying on the study of the various Celtic languages, living and extinct.Wiley, "Celtic studies, early history of the field" (2006). The primary areas of focus are the six Celtic languages currently in use: Irish language, Scottish Gaelic, Manx language, Welsh language, Cornish language, and Breton language.
As a university subject, it is taught at a number of universities, most of them in Ireland, the United Kingdom, or France, but also in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands.
Academic interest in Celtic languages grew out of comparative and historical linguistics, which were established at the end of the 18th century. In the 16th century, Renaissance humanist George Buchanan, a native speaker of the Scottish Gaelic language, comparatively studied the Goidelic languages. The first major breakthrough in Celtic linguistics came with the publication of Archaeologia Britannica (1707) by the Welsh scholar Edward Lhuyd, who was the first to recognise that Gaulish, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish all belong to the same language family. Lhuyd also published an English translation of a study by Paul-Yves Pezron into Gaulish.
In 1767 James Parsons published his study The Remains of Japhet, being historical enquiries into the affinity and origins of the European languages. He compared a 1000-word lexicon of Irish and Welsh and concluded that they were originally the same, then comparing the numerals in many other languages.
The second big leap forwards was made when Sir William Jones postulated that Sanskrit, Avestan, Greek, Latin and many other languages including "the Celtic" derived from a common ancestral language. This hypothesis, published in The Sanscrit Language (1786), would later be hailed as the discovery of the Indo-European language family, from which grew the field of Indo-European studies.
Although Jones' trail-blazing hypothesis inspired numerous linguistic studies, it was not until Bavarian linguist Johann Kaspar Zeuss's monumental Grammatica Celtica (volume 1, 1851; volume 2, 1853) that any truly significant progress was made. Written in Latin, the work draws on the earliest Old Irish, Middle Welsh and other Celtic to construct a comparative grammar, which was the first to lay out a firm basis for Celtic philology. Among his many other achievements, Zeuss was able to decipher and explain Old Irish verbal and grammatical rules and also definitively linked the Celtic languages to the Indo-European language family
In 1896, Kuno Meyer and Ludwig Christian Stern founded the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie (ZCP), the first academic journal solely devoted to aspects of Celtic languages and literature, and still in existence today. In the second half of the century, significant contributions were made by the Orientalist Ernst Windisch (1844–1918). He held a chair in Sanskrit at the University of Leipzig; but he is best remembered for his numerous publications in the field of Celtic studies. In 1901, the Orientalist and Celtologist Heinrich Zimmer (1851–1910) was made professor of Celtic languages at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, the first position of its kind in Germany. He was followed in 1911 by Kuno Meyer (1858–1919), who, in addition to numerous publications in the field, was active in the Irish independence movement.
Perhaps the most important German-speaking Celticist was Swiss scholar Rudolf Thurneysen (1857–1940). A student of Windisch and Zimmer, Thurneysen was appointed to the chair of comparative linguistics at the University of Freiburg in 1887; he succeeded to the equivalent chair at the University of Bonn in 1913. His notability arises from his work on Old Irish. For his masterwork, Handbuch des Altirischen ("Handbook of Old Irish", 1909), translated into English as A Grammar of Old Irish, he located and analysed a multitude of Old Irish manuscripts. His work is considered as the basis for all succeeding studies of Old Irish.
In 1920, Julius Pokorny (1887–1970) was appointed to the chair of Celtic languages at Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin. Despite his support for centrist German nationalism and membership in the Catholic Church in Germany, he was forced out of his university position by the Nazis on account of his Jewish ancestry. He subsequently fled as a refugee to Switzerland but returned to Germany in 1955 to teach at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. In Berlin, he was succeeded in 1937 by , a devout Nazi.
After World War II, Celtic studies predominantly continued in West Germany and the Second Austrian Republic. Studies in the field continued at Freiburg, Bonn, Marburg, Hamburg as well as Innsbruck; however, an independent professorship in Celtic studies has not been instituted anywhere. In this period, Hans Hartmann, Heinrich Wagner and Wolfgang Meid made notable contributions to the scientific understanding of the boundaries of the Celtic language area and the location of the homeland of the Celtic peoples. In what became East Berlin chair in Celtic languages at what was renamed Humboldt University has remained unoccupied since 1966.
Today, Celtic studies is only taught at a handful of German universities, including those of Bonn, Trier, and Mannheim, the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, and the Philipps University of Marburg. It is also taught at the University of Vienna. Only Marburg, Vienna and Bonn maintain formal programs of study, but even then usually as a subsection of comparative or general linguistics. Only Marburg offers an M.A. course specifically in Celtic Studies. No Celtic studies research has taken place in the former centres of Freiburg, Hamburg or Berlin since the 1990s. The last remaining chair in Celtic studies, that at Humboldt University of Berlin, was abolished in 1997.
The only Chair of Celtic studies in Continental Europe is at Utrecht University (in the Netherlands). It was established in 1923, when Celtic studies were added to the Chair of Germanic studies on the special request of its new professor A. G. van Hamel.
The formal study of Celtic Studies at British universities in the late nineteenth century gave rise to the establishment of chairs for Sir John Rhŷs, first Jesus Professor of Celtic at the University of Oxford, in 1874 and for Donald MacKinnon, first Chair of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh, in 1882. Institutions in the United Kingdom that have Celtic Studies departments and courses are: the Universities of Aberdeen, Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Exeter (which houses the Institute of Cornish Studies), Glasgow, Oxford, Swansea, Trinity St David's, Queen's University Belfast, Ulster University, the University of the Highlands and Islands and the University of Wales, Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. The top five rated degree-awarding programmes/departments as of 2017 are; (1) Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at University of Cambridge (2) Welsh and Celtic Studies at Bangor University (3) Welsh and Celtic Studies at Cardiff University (4) Celtic and Gaelic at University of Glasgow (5) Irish and Celtic Studies at Queen's University, Belfast.
A major funder of Celtic Studies doctoral studies in the United Kingdom is the AHRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in the Celtic Languages, which admitted PhD students in the period 2014–2019. The CDT in Celtic Languages is administered through Celtic and Gaelic at the University of Glasgow and its director is Prof. Katherine Forsyth.
The beginning of Celtic Studies as a university subject in Ireland might be dated to Eugene O'Curry's appointment as professor of Irish history and archaeology at the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854. In the republic, Celtic Studies, either as full Celtic Studies programmes or as Irish language programmes, are now offered in the NUI Galway, University College Cork, University College Dublin (the successor institution to the Catholic University), National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Trinity College Dublin, University of Limerick, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Dublin City University. The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), School of Celtic Studies, is a research institution but does not award degrees. DIAS and the Royal Irish Academy are leading publishers of Celtic Studies research, including the journals Celtica and Ériu.
In Northern Ireland, Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University offer Celtic studies programmes. In Northern Ireland, Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University also offer Celtic studies.
A major funder of UK Celtic Studies doctoral studies is the AHRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in the Celtic Languages, which admitted PhD students in the period 2014–2019. The CDT in Celtic Languages is administered through Celtic and Gaelic at the University of Glasgow and its director is Prof. Katherine Forsyth.
Other Canadian universities which offer courses in Celtic, Scottish or Irish studies include Cape Breton University, Celtic Studies . Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Simon Fraser University, the University of Guelph and the University of Ottawa.
The University of Western Brittany (Brest) offers a two-year, international European-Union certified master's degree course entitled "Celtic languages and Cultures in Contact". It is part of the Centre for Breton and Celtic Research (CRBC). Closely linked to this MA programme, the University of Western Brittany organizes an intensive two-week Summer School in Breton Language and Cultural Heritage Studies every year in June. This Summer School is also sponsored by the CRBC and welcomes scholars from around the world with an interest in the Celtic (and minority) languages and cultures to study Breton, the least known of the living Celtic languages.
Irish studies are taught at the University of Burgos (Spain) The Spanish Association for Irish Studies and the University of A Coruña (Galicia). University Institute of Research in Irish Studies, A Coruña, Galicia Galicia also has its own Institute for Celtic Studies.
Celtic Studies are taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of Sydney (Australia), which also hosts the triennial Australian Conference of Celtic Studies.
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