The Margaret Laing Lecture is a biennial event hosted by the Angus McIntosh Centre which showcases the work of a prominent or emerging historical linguist. It is meant as an opportunity for the local AMC community to engage with researchers from further afield which are making important contributions to our shared area of studies.

Originally simply the ‘AMC Biennial Lecture’, the event was renamed in 2023 as a tribute to Dr Margaret Laing (1953–2023), who was an Edinburgh-based historical linguist specialising in early Middle English dialectology. ‘Meg’ was also the compiler of the trailblazing Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) and a honorary member of the AMC. To learn more about Meg’s life and work, we invite you to read Prof. Michael Benskin’s obituary.

Previous and upcoming lectures:

2023: TBC

2021: (Cancelled due to Covid)

2019: Prof. Dag Haug (Oslo) “Correlatives cross-linguistically and in Indo-European“

2017: Prof. Aditi Lahiri (Oxford) “Pertinacity of Phonological Nonesuches“