Gaois

About Gaois

Gaois is a research group in Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, DCU, comprising lecturers, researchers and postgraduate students. Our aim is to sustain and transform Irish language and culture through the development of innovative and trusted resources.

Our work began in 2004 with the Focal project (now téarma.ie) aiming to provide an integrated database of new Irish language terminology for all. This specialisation in terminology continued through the LEX project which has provided terminology support for the EU Institutions from 2008 onward. We began working on Logainm, a comprehensive system for administering and sharing placename data, in 2007. We then turned our attention to digitising the Ainm biography collection and the website was published in 2011. Since 2012, we have been collaborating on Dúchas, the National Folklore Collection Digitization Project, and we are building on this with the Hidden Heritages project. The National Corpus for Irish is in development since 2022. This website, gaois.ie, was created in 2014 in order to publish other corpus- and terminology-related resources which had been developed by the team.

A common thread running through all the projects is the application of modern technology to expand our understanding of the Irish language and its wider influence past, present and future. Quality, openness and accessibility are immediately recognisable traits of our work.

Gaois is an enabler which networks its own academic interests and other competencies found elsewhere in DCU to develop the resources of our partner organisations through access, interpretation and interconnection. Gaois receives funding from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (with support from the National Lottery), Foras na Gaeilge, AHRC/IRC and the National Folklore Foundation. Our main partners include the Terminology Committee, the Placenames Branch, the National Folklore Collection and Cló Iar-Chonnacht.