User:Virginia Blankenhorn

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Virginia Stevens Blankenhorn is a Californian who learned to speak Irish in the 1970s. A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard University, she lived in Ireland and Scotland for a number of years in the 1970s and ‘80s, first as an independent student at University College Galway (and adjacent Connemara gaeltacht), and then as a research scholar at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (School of Celtic Studies). She was subsequently appointed to a temporary lectureship in the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, and then to a permanent post in the Department of Irish Studies, University of Ulster. She received the PhD from the University of Edinburgh for her work on Irish versification, and a book based on her dissertation, Irish Song-Craft and Metrical Practice Since 1600, was published by the Edwin Mellen Press in 2003. She has also published and lectured on aspects of stress and intonation in spoken Irish, as well as on traditional song in Irish and in Scottish Gaelic.

In 1978 she released, under the name “Virginia Stevens,” an LP of Connemara sean-nós songs, “Tiocfaidh an Samhradh,” on the Mulligan label; and in 2001 she took third place at Fleadh Cheol na hÉireann, the senior All-Ireland competition for women's singing in the Irish language in Listowel, Co. Kerry. After a number of years in the United States, Virginia has returned to Ireland and is working as an independent scholar and researcher in Co. Kilkenny.