Will Wakely , PhD Student in Scandinavian Studies

Thesis title: Islandness, Identity, and Experience in Northern Scotland and Norway

Year of study: 2

  • Scandinavian Studies
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

PhD supervisors:

Address

Street

The Mainland

City
Inverness, Highland
Post code
Street

Inverarish

City
Isle of Raasay, by Kyle of Lochalsh
Post code

Availability

  • Regularly down in Edinburgh once a month; irregularly outwith this / for special occasions.

    Always happy to chat by email!

Biography

Background

Will Wakely is a second-year PhD Student based in the Highlands. He has previously completed a MA (Hons) in Scandinavian Studies (First with Distinction in Spoken Norwegian) and a MScR in Scandinavian Studies (Distinction) at the University of Edinburgh.

His MScR project focussed on the relationship between (written) language, place, and people in Norway with weight on the role of the minoritised Norwegian language, Nynorsk, in aiding the negotiation of place identity in Vossevangen, Odda, and Bø i Telemark. This project aimed to attend to the landscape side of Linguistic Landscape Research, taking a broader, distributed and active view of Space:Place influenced by the works of Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon,  John Agnew and Henri Levebre.

His PhD project, inspired by living and working in the Inner Hebrides for 4 years, is focussed on embodied landscapes,  phenomonological and imagined islands, island experiences and identities, and narrative and discourse as emplaced in the landscape with fieldwork in Shetland and Northern Norway.

Outwith academics Will currently works as a cleaner to support his studies while pursuing his PhD remotely. He is based between the Inner Hebrides, where he helps keep the beaches between Clachan and Òskaig free from sperm whale bits (beitar), and Inverness, where he keeps a sourdough starter (Michael) and studies. The bus ride is long but worth more than its £2 fare, even if hire cars on the road mean it often misses the ferry connection.

Qualifications

PhD in Scandinavian Studies, The University of Edinburgh, (2025-

MScR in Scandinavian Studies (II), The University of Edinburgh, (2024-2025)

MScR thesis title: Nynorsk Places? Three Case Studies on the Importance of Written Language for Constructing “Senses of Place” in Norway

MA (Hons) in Scandinavian Studies, The University of Edinburgh, (2020-2024)

Past project grants

ScAN Travel / Research Grant, 2026. Funded a 2 week period of fieldwork in Northern and Western Norway, establishing community relationships and collecting preliminary landscape data.

Participant

Bergen Summer Research School, Universitetet i Bergen (UiB), June 2026. Focus on diverse ways of sensing, knowing, and valuing the Ocean.

Papers delivered

Life and Landscape ECRS, The University of Nottingham, June 2026. Paper presented based on MScR research.

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