Professor Watson was head boy at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution during 1961-1962 from where he won an open scholarship in Classics to King's College, Cambridge.
As Seosamh Watson, he is familiar to students and scholars of Irish language and literature on account of numerous academic, as well as more popular, books and articles.
He is a founding member of the International Society for Dialectology and Geolinguistics, and joint editor of the multi-volume UNESCO-sponsored Atlas Linguarum Europae, currently published by the Romanian Academy of Science.
A prominent member of the Baha'i community in Ireland, Watson has translated a number of religious texts into Irish, including The Hidden Words by Baháʼu'lláh.
[2] At the 15th International Congress of Celtic Studies in 2015, the University of Glasgow, which hosted the event, awarded Watson an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree for his contribution to the discipline.