Michael Newton (Gaelic scholar)

Michael Newton is a minority language activist and Scottish Gaelic scholar. He was born in 1965 and raised in a bilingual (Spanish and English speaking) community in Southern California. He embarked on a career in computer game design as a teenager, becoming one of the creators of the pioneering game Dungeon Master at FTL Games. After graduating magna cum laude from the University of San Diego in 1990 with a degree in computer science, he switched his focus to Scottish Gaelic studies and in 1998 was awarded a PhD in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh.

Newton has produced a number of scholarly projects regarding Scottish Gaelic, including books, articles, edited volumes, blog posts, a video documentary, and digital humanities multimedia projects exploring Celtic language poets in North America, for which he has received numerous awards, including the Coralys Award in 2002 and 2003 and the inaugural 2014 Saltire Award from St. Andrews University Scottish Heritage Center. He is a co-founder and board member of Urras Gàidhlig nan Stàitean Aonaichte (Scottish Gaelic Society of the United States).

Much of his work challenges the negative stereotypes that have been projected onto Gaelic society by anglophone authorities and anglocentric sources, drawing on the methods of post-colonial studies. He is one of the only scholars currently studying the legacy of the Scottish Gaelic immigrant communities of the Americas, especially by locating and analyzing the remains of Scottish Gaelic literature.

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