The Royal Irish Academy

Dr David Stifter is Professor of Old and Middle Irish at Maynooth University. He is founder and editor of the interdisciplinary Celtic-studies journal Keltische Forschungen (Vienna 2006–), and founding member of the Societas Celtologica Europaea (European Association of Celtic Studies scholars). His research interests are language variation and change in Old Irish and comparative Celtic linguistic...

Dr Chantal Kobel is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Conference by the Royal Irish Academy Library in partnership with Roinn na Sean-Ghaeilge, Ollscoil Mhá Nuad. The Royal Irish Academy manuscript known by its shelfmark ‘23 N 10’ was produced in Ballycummin, Co. Roscommon, in the sixteenth century. It is an extraordinarily important...

Rural Conversation No. 2: ‘Enhancing social cohesion among communities in rural Ireland’ was held on 28 February 2019. It was the second in this series of consultative rural stakeholder events and was held in Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) This consultative rural stakeholder event was opened by Dr Michael Mulvey, President, DkIT (timecode— 1:00) who hosted this event. Professor Áine Hyland...

Wednesday 12 December 2018 Discourse marking the centenary of the 1918 parliamentary elections when women voted and stood for election to parliament for the first time, the Royal Irish Academy presented the four female former Tánaistí: Joan Burton, T.D., Mary Coughlan, Frances Fitzgerald, T.D. and Mary Harney in conversation with David McCullagh to share their experiences of governing and gender i...

Discourse with Professor Chris Bean in which he discusses predictability and uncertainty in forecasting volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides. On 25 September 2018, Professor Chris Bean's discourse 'Recent insights into how the Earth works: embracing uncertainty' took place in Academy House. In the following interview, he outlines... • How the Earth interacts in its totality and how Earth’s...

Wednesday 7 November 2018 This Academy Discourse by Professor Máire O'Neill, Queen's University Belfast, is the eighth in the series sponsored by Mason Hayes & Curran. With the rapid proliferation of pervasive electronic devices in our lives, the internet of things (IoT) has become a reality and its influence on our day to day activities is set to further increase with a projected 125 Billion conn...

Academy Discourse Series sponsored by Mason Hayes & Curran Tuesday 15 January 2019, Academy House Sir David Cannadine, President of the British Academy and Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, addresses the key issues in Irish history within the context of British history from the early 1800s and the Act of Union, through to the current Brexit situation.

R. J. Hunter was a highly respected (and much loved) historian of the Ulster plantation, who spent the bulk of his academic career teaching at the University of Ulster. His varied research interests included the role of the English settler in the Ulster plantation, the history of Ulster trade and migration from and to Britain and North America and development of towns, and the cultural and intelle...

A panel discussion with four Irish women writers to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Maria (1768–1849), held in Academy House on Thursday, December 06, 2018 The event commenced with a brief talk on Maria Edgeworth's life as a professional writer by Claire Connolly MRIA, School of English, UCC. Margaret Kelleher, Professor and Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD, then ch...

A recording of a rural stakeholder event on economic development in rural Ireland, hosted by NUIG on 8 November 2018 as part of a series of three rural stakeholder events, organised by the RIA Social Sciences Committee in collaboration with the Department of Rural and Community Development and being hosted in three separate HEIs around the island of Ireland.

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Marie Bourke, former Keeper-Head of Education at the National Gallery of Ireland. The fourth lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century.' Margaret Stokes was a pioneering figure in Irish antiquarian studies. This lecture explore Stokes as a woman who only reached her potential when she was over fifty, resulting in a creativ...

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Professor Claire Connolly, Professor of Modern English at University College Cork. The third lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century.' Throughout her life, Maria Edgeworth took an interest in questions of women’s education, always connected in her writing to such issues as political economy, population and nationality. The...

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Angela Byrne, DFAT Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. The second lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century' Princess Dashkova was one of the leading lights of the Enlightenment, a multilingual traveller, writer and early confidante of Catherine the Great. In 1783-94, she directed two Russian academ...

Michael MacDonagh is Chief Archaeologist in the National Monuments Service of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. In this podcast he talks of the opportunities and challenges of preserving Ireland’s past and managing our archaeological heritage. Against the 150th anniversary of the first legislation that led to the state assuming responsibility for our most iconic national monum...

Dr Natalie Harrower is the Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland. In this podcast she talks about the challenges of preserving heritage that is ‘born digital’ and how best to collect and safeguard our digital cultural heritage. Thirty years after the World Heritage Convention was created to identify and protect outstanding natural and cultural heritage of universal value across the world,...

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Clare O'Halloran, lecturer in History at University College Cork. The first lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century.' Until recently, learned societies, which were set up by men for men, have found it difficult to know how to react to the figure of the learned woman. Should she be ignored or welcomed into their midst? Th...

...In A Volatile State - Laura McAtackney This podcast aims to re-focus our attention away from the personal narratives of oral testimonies as well as the documents of government archives in terms of how we understand the Northern Ireland Troubles and its continuing presence. Instead, it will examine the aftermath of the conflict in terms of what has happened to its material remains since the Good...

Katherine O'Donnell, director of an Irish Research Council project on recording the archival and oral history of the Irish Magdalenes, reveals how she came to undertake the project. She describes how she learned to deal with vicarious trauma and how the Magdalene oral history collection has an added significance given the imposed silence on the survivors of residential institutional abuse who part...

From splendid Georgian beginnings to squalid tenement dwellings, the 14 Henrietta street museum seeks to interpret and exhibit Dublin’s rich and chequered social history through the stories and shifting fortunes of its residents. Built as a townhouse for the members of Dublin’s ruling elite, 14 Henrietta Street was divided into 19 tenement flats in 1877, with some 100 people living under its roof...

Dr. Sandra Collins, Director of the National Library of Ireland, discusses how national libraries are memory keepers for their countries, collecting and keeping safe memories that share the culture, heritage and story of their nation. The interpretation of memory may change over time, and it’s important to preserve the authentic source materials. Memory objects include photographs, manuscripts, ep...

John McCafferty, UCD discusses the importance of the archives of Catholic religious congregations and dioceses for writing the history of Ireland. It looks beyond the practical matters of conservation, preservation and dissemination of these unique records to examine some of the cultural and intellectual anxieties of both the owners and would-be readers.  It suggests that it is worth considering t...

... at the National Museum of Ireland A crucial element of the museum is the human connection it offers. For both visitors and researchers, the museum has potentially a very different interaction with our history. It is a place of conversations, of shared experience and knowledge, and of shared narrative. Contemporary collecting and the broader policy around thoughts for the future requires some d...

A Royal Irish Academy Library Lunchtime Lecture on archaeologist and Irish art historian Françoise Henry, MRIA. Speaker: Dr Eileen Kane Born in Dublin, Dr. Eileen Kane was educated at the Dominican College, Eccles Street and at University College Dublin, from which she graduated with a B.A. in Latin and French, M.A. in French, and Higher Diploma in Education. After some years teaching at Secondary...

On Thursday 26 April 2018, the Royal Irish Academy Life and Medical Sciences Committee presented a one-day conference addressing the wide-ranging implications of gene editing techniques for all of life and medical science. Gene editing is a ground-breaking technology that is affording opportunities to make precise, small changes to an organism’s DNA. Using a series of proteins that act in effect a...

Academy Discourse by Professor William C. Campbell, Hon. MRIA is the third in the series sponsored by Mason Hayes & Curran. Ivermectin is a medication used in the treatment and control of parasitic diseases. In veterinary medicine, it is widely used in livestock and pets. It has several applications in human medicine, and has been notably successful in the prevention of River Blindness in the trop...