Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway

27/10/2026

Join us for our first webinar of 2026/2027.
Tuesday, October 27th at 6pm – 7pm (Irish time) online.

At this event we will be talking about alternative career paths within academia. Hear from scholars who have successfully brought their expertise to other roles within Higher Education: Dr Suz Garrad, Dr Anna Pilz & Dr Tara Giddens.

A question and answer session will follow the panel discussion and the presentations will be recorded.

Speakers:
Dr Suz Garrard is the Research Culture and Quality Manager (RCQM) for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities (AHSS), and Social Sciences at Trinity College Dublin. She is one of three RCQMs who are centrally located in Trinity Research but Faculty facing. Her role is to facilitate positive research cultures in the Faculty of AHSS, addressing issues such as career pathway sustainability, responsible research assessment, equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and Open Scholarship. Prior to this role, Suz led the EDI strategy and associated policies at Research Ireland (formerly Science Foundation Ireland), including the agency’s implementation of the Narrative CV. She has also held roles as a Programme Manager of COALESCE and New Foundations at the Irish Research Council and research development roles at IT Carlow/SETU and Dublin City University. She has represented funding agencies and institutions on DORA and CoARA forums and working groups. She received an M.Litt. in Women, Writing and Gender and a PhD in English Literature from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) before being awarded a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCD. She is committed to supporting AHSS research and researchers to thrive, always prioritising equity and the lived experiences of researchers in her work.

Dr Tara Giddens is the Director of the Writing Centre at UL. She manages the centre, trains and assists tutors, and works with students and academic staff to develop their writing and research skills. She has been teaching at UL since 2016 across various departments, including the School of English, Irish and Communications (EIC), Academic Writing for Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics (MLAL), Communications for the Kemmy Business School (KBS), and the Language Centre.
Tara’s background is in literature, specifically Irish women’s writing and journalism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 2021, she completed her thesis “Investigating the Irish New Woman: Journalists in Media and Fiction” at the University of Limerick. Tara is continuing her research on Irish women journalists from the nineteenth century by analysing and comparing the fictional and journalistic work of Irish women journalists, specifically, Kathleen Coleman, L. T. Meade, and Charlotte O’Conor Eccles. Her article “Promoting Professional Networks: Charlotte O’Conor Eccles’ Journalism and Fiction” (2023) was published in a special issue for English Studies. She is also currently a part-time researcher on a transnational project, “Nation States, Ethnicity and Belonging: Tracing the Emergence of Transnational Modernism in Estonian and Irish Writing” which has received grant funding from the Estonian Research Council (ETAG).

Dr Anna Pilz has a research background in Irish Studies with publications on Lady Augusta Gregory, Irish women’s writing, Irish writing and environmental history as well as on Scotland’s coastal romanticisms. Following a series of fixed-term postdoctoral research fellowships in Ireland, Germany, and the UK, she moved into professional service roles. Bringing her research fellow experiences and understanding of funding environments to positions in researcher and research development at the University of Edinburgh, she’s working with researchers across career stages to develop project ideas into competitive funding proposals. Most recently, she’s co-authored the open access resource ‘From Idea to Interview: A Comprehensive Guide to Fellowship Applications’. She continues to be active as an independent researcher.
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22/10/2026

Well, Dr Nessa Cronin was like another proud Irish mammy at the University graduations on Tuesday when she saw some of the Centre's wonderful students from Irish Studies graduate in style with their BA degrees at the University of Galway. She managed to snag Mr Jonathan Breen and Mr Bennett Flynn away from the festivities for a brief moment to get some final photographs and share some memories of the past 4 years. Many thanks to the families, friends and partners who shared the celebrations and to make the day a very special one for all as noted by President David Burn at the ceremony in the Bailey Allen Hall.

The team at the Centre for Irish studies would like to wish all our wonderful graduates the very best for their future careers, and the door at the Centre is always open to welcome them back anytime! Bainigí sult as an gceiliúradh ar fad don tseachtain seo, agus tá muid anseo san Ionad fíor-bhródúil asaibh go léir!

22/10/2026

A Stitch in Time! Dr Molly-Claire Gillett, Postdoctoral Scholar, Centre for Irish Studies.

Congratulations to our wonderful postdoctoral scholar Dr Molly-Claire Gillett who has just finished up her 2-year interdisciplinary and transnational research project co-mentored by Dr Nessa Cronin (Centre for Irish Studies, School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, University of Galway, Ireland) and Professor Mark Skinner (Centre for Aging & Society, Trent University, Ontario, Canada). Molly-Claire’s work explored the connections between craft communities, age and gender with craft groups across Canada and Ireland, and was funded by the Canadian Government Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). See her ACIS award-winning book Irish Lacemaking here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/irish-lacemaking-9781350465510/

And for more on her recent outputs emerging from this project see the beautiful community quilt co-designed by Molly-Claire in collaboration with the Simcoe Area Women’s Institute in Ontario, Canada, celebrating 100 years of activities, 1926-2026. See Molly-Claire’s blog on this project here: https://simcoe.ca/simcoe-county-archives-blog/simcoe-area-womens-institute-centennial-quilt/

19/10/2026

Irish Studies Early Career Scholars Interdisciplinary Seminar. Thursday, 22nd October at 4pm

You are most welcome to attend the first of our inaugural Irish Studies Early Career Scholars Interdisciplinary Seminars at the Centre for Irish Studies, School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, University of Galway, this year.

Our new Research Ireland Postdoctoral Scholar, Dr Ashley Cahillane (2026-28), will give a seminar based on her current project entitled, "The Storied Atlantic: Literary and Lived Narratives of Ocean Voyage in the Twenty-first Century".

The seminar will take place at 4pm, Thursday 22 October, Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies, 4 Distillery Road. Please note that this is an in-person seminar only. Future seminars will be hybrid, where possible/appropriate.

Please find further details below, and there will be a warm welcome for MA, MSc, PhD and Postdoctoral Scholars interested in Irish Studies, World and Comparative Literatures, Environmental Humanities and Ocean & Marine Sciences more broadly. Interdisciplinary and multilingual conversations are, as always, especially welcome.

Speaker: Dr Ashley Cahillane (Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway)

Title: The Storied Atlantic: Literary and Lived Narratives of Ocean Voyage in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract: This talk introduces a new research project on contemporary stories of Atlantic Ocean voyages. The Atlantic, so central to Galway, is a site of old and new forms of journeys—scientific expeditions, fishing, the laying of submarine cables, renewable energy works, and more. The open ocean is often out of sight and out of mind, which can block care for its happenings. How might ecocriticism and narrative inquiry make these voyages more visible? And how might voyage stories—across literature and the lived experience of seafarers—reflect and reshape human-ocean relationships in a time of climate crisis and geopolitical change? In answering these questions, this project proposes an innovative ecocritical methodology for combining literary analysis with participant interviews.

Ashley Cahillane is a Research Ireland Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Researcher working with Dr Nessa Cronin at the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway. She specialises in contemporary climate change fiction, postcolonial & world literature, and the Blue Humanities. Her research explores how literature can help to illuminate and transform human-water relations for more just futures. Ashley has previously worked at University College Dublin and University of East Anglia on the Horizon Europe-funded MARBEFES project developing humanities methods for valuing marine biodiversity for policy. Ashley's research has been published in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism and Environmental Science & Policy, among other outlets. Her monograph on representations of drought in world literature is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press

08/10/2026

Political and Cultural Refractions in Music: Moving Hearts, Reflecting Minds, Ireland 1981
October 14, 2026
5:00 pm
Connolly House Andover Room

Program alumna Méabh Ní Fhuartháin will deliver this year's Dalsimer Lecture. Titled "Political and Cultural Refractions in Music: Moving Hearts, Reflecting Minds, Ireland 1981," this talk considers the eponymous Moving Hearts album, first released in 1981, to reflect on contemporaneous political, social, and environmental concerns in Ireland at the beginning of a tumultuous decade on the island. Among the concerns are the North of Ireland, climate and fuel instability, colonialism, and landlordism. Creating an innovative soundscape which draws on a range of musical precedents, the album presents a generational response to Ireland and its place in the wider world at that moment in time. Some forty-five years later, thematic resonances with concerns of Irish activists-creatives of the twenty-first century are notable, raising questions about the capacity of the political complex in Ireland to ever resolve these issues satisfactorily.

Specializing in Irish Music and Dance Studies, Méabh Ní Fhurtháin is an Associate Professor in Irish Studies at the Center for Irish Studies, University of Galway. A former graduate student and early-career teacher at Boston College, Méabh's attention to popular music, dance, emigration, and gender in her published work makes her a leader in the interdisciplinary field of Irish Studies. She has co-edited special issues of Ethnomusicology Ireland (2021) and Éire-Ireland (2019) and was subject editor for the Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland (2013). She has edited and contributed chapters to numerous book collections, including handbooks of Irish Studies; published a monograph titled Heading to the Fleadh: Festival, Cultural Revival and Irish Traditional Music 1951-1969 (Cork University Press); is currently General Editor of Ethnomusicology Ireland; and is a Board Director of Music Generation Ireland, the national body for non-curriculum music education in Ireland.

02/10/2026

Laurence Hynes is an Irish visual artist who works primarily in the medium of photography. He is a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar in the Centre for Irish Studies, under the supervision of Dr. Nessa Cronin, where his Doctoral research is on Tim Robinson’s cartographic work in the west of Ireland (1975–1996). In May 2026 Laurence was supported by the School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies Student Research Support Scheme to conduct fieldwork at locations named by Tim Robinson on his maps of the Aran Islands. Laurence visited Ceann a Mhada, Port Daibhche, and other locations on Inis Mór, and Móinín na Ruaige and adjacent sites on Inis Meáin.

28/09/2026

Visiting Doctoral Student at the Centre for Irish Studies: Lucia Carminati, Italy.

We were delighted to read Lucia Carmineati’s blogpost about her time here at the University of Galway as a Visiting PhD scholar during the 2025-26 academic year. Lucia is conducting a PhD in Literature and Linguistics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy, and took many of our modules at the Centre for Irish Studies last year. She was a welcome contributor to our Irish Studies Seminar Series and a much-valued member of our vibrant Irish Studies graduate community here in Galway.

We wish Lucia the very best for her doctoral research, and you can read about her experience at the university here: https://enricoreggiani.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/my-experience-at-the-university-of-galway/

17/09/2026

Irish Studies Seminar Series - 4pm, Thursday 24 September
2026.

Fáilte ar ais chuig an mbliain acadúil nua ag an Ionad Léann na hÉireann. We are very much looking forward to having you all back with us for a wonderful year of interdisciplinary and multilingual explorations with our Irish Studies Seminar Series again this year.

We are delighted to have Professor Frank Shovlin (Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool), who was with us in Galway as part of the College of Arts Visiting Fellowships this summer, to open the series for us this year.

Seminar: Professor Frank Shovlin (Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool), ‘Ferocious Silence: Reading McGahern in the AI Age’.

Time: 4pm, Thursday 24 September 2026.

Venue: Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies, 4 Distillery Road.

This seminar will look at how and why Professor Shovlin came to write John McGahern’s biography, considering the central role his time as a student at Galway and subsequent use of the McGahern papers at the university played in his thinking. It will consider the importance of silence, solitude and privacy in McGahern’s work, and open out into a discussion of how we might better our lives through a deep engagement with McGahern's fiction.
Frank Shovlin is Professor of Irish Literature in English at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. He was M. H. Abrams Visiting Research Fellow at the National Humanities Center, North Carolina for the 2024-25 academic year, writing the authorized biography of John McGahern which will be published by Faber in October 2026. In 2018-19 he was a British Academy Senior Research Fellow, completing work on his critically acclaimed edition of The Letters of John McGahern (Faber and Faber, 2021). Other publications include John McGahern’s Dublin (Dublin City Libraries, 2020); Touchstones: John McGahern’s Classical Style (Liverpool University Press, 2016); Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival (Liverpool University Press, 2012); and The Irish Literary Periodical 1923-1958 (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Students and early career scholars are especially welcome to this seminar, and early arrival is recommended as space is limited. Agus, mar is de ghnáth, beidh fáilte roimh chách!

15/09/2026

Culture Night Event, 18 September 2026

Centre for Irish Studies travels to Cork City!



Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery presents an In-Conversation session featuring artist Maitiú Mac Cárthaigh (Hardiman Doctoral Scholar, Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway) and Dr Nessa Cronin (Centre for Irish Studies) on 18 September 2026 at 13:00.

The talk explores Mac Cárthaigh's research regarding their solo exhibitions hay boy, gay boy at Cork Printmakers and thirty 6-inch top-down all-purpose at LHQ Gallery.

This free event will offer attendees the opportunity to hear Mac Cárthaigh's insights into these projects in conversation with Dr Nessa Cronin.
https://eventslist.co.uk/cork/events/in-conversation-maitiu-mac-carthaigh-artist-dr-nessa-cronin-2026-09-18

Mac Cárthaigh’s work explores the rural sexual imaginary. Within this, Mac Cárthaigh’s practice focuses on rural gentrification, homonormativity, greenwashing, and the material economies of space and place. They approach work through a Country Boy’s Make-Do methodology, drawing on a Co-Op materiality. Mac Cárthaigh’s practice examines how we construct different kinds of rural space with a materiality not rooted in rurality but with things that come in off the back of a lorry to be bought off the shelf.
hay boy, gay boy builds from Mac Cárthaigh’s writing practice set in Ballybent, a semi-fictional slice of gentrified countryside heaven made for urban consumption. This work follows a throuple who recently relocated from the City to Ballybent.

08/09/2026

We were all greatly saddened to learn of the death of Professor Emeritus of Economics Patrick A. McGuire of Hobart and William Smith Colleges last week.

Professor McGuire was a valued friend and colleague to all at the Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Galway, with generations of students benefitting so much from the academic programmes he developed in the US and cultivated in Galway over the decades. In particular, his work with Professor Louis de Paor and all at the Centre for Irish Studies, in association with Maeve Cuffe and the late Séamus O’Grady, provided an extraordinarily rich and formative study abroad experience for Hobart and William Smith students in Ireland. The programme has blossomed into one of our flagship international programmes on offer at the University of Galway. All of that was due to the care and expertise that was brought to bear when crafting such programmes from the beginning, and Pat was so instrumental to that vision.

Below, we acknowledge the message offered from President Mark D. Gearan, President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, to the HWS academic community in remembrance of Professor Pat McGuire. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

Dear Members of the HWS Community,
It is with a heavy heart that I write to share the news that Professor Emeritus of Economics Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12, who served Hobart and William Smith for more than five decades including as interim president and interim provost, has died. Our thoughts and deepest care are with Sandy and their family.
For generations of students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents, Pat was an extraordinary and defining part of the life of Hobart and William Smith. He delighted in his students and colleagues, he loved Geneva and exploring the globe, and he treasured Hobart and William Smith. He spent his life making our world a better, more just, more empathetic and more thoughtful place. And no one could ever mistake that laugh – a wallop of humor and energy that punctuated his joy in a conversation, a turn of phrase, an event or an idea.
Pat joined the faculty in 1968 as a scholar and teacher of economics and public policy and went on to mentor scores of students, guiding dozens of Honors projects and independent studies. He chaired the Economics Department and served on numerous faculty committees. I asked him to co-chair HWS’ Culture of Respect initiative and to serve as interim provost and dean of faculty, where he oversaw academic programming, faculty hiring and evaluation, the Registrar’s Office, library staff and other academic services. As interim president, he led Hobart and William Smith with indefatigable energy and optimism.
Pat’s impact on HWS reached far beyond any leadership titles might indicate. He co-founded HWS’ public policy program in Washington, D.C., serving as faculty director on 10 occasions, and was instrumental in expanding off-campus and global study opportunities. For more than two decades, he co-taught the Two Cities bi-disciplinary course with Professor Emeritus of Sociology Jim Spates and led HWS programs in Ireland, England and Central Europe, as well as a Semester at Sea. Together, Pat and Sandy directed five HWS alumni and parent excursions to Ireland. He was also a longtime participant in the Wall Street Experience Program, connecting students with HWS alumni and employers in Manhattan’s financial sector. With students, he completed an economic impact study documenting the contributions of HWS to the Geneva community.
Pat’s commitment to access and opportunity was equally evident in his work with students and the wider community. Alongside faculty and students, he helped launch the HWS Second Chances Program, providing college-level courses to incarcerated students at Five Points Correctional Facility. In Geneva, he served on the boards of the Geneva Boys & Girls Club, Finger Lakes Credit Union and Success for Geneva’s Children, and served on a committee supporting the development of a comprehensive master plan for the City of Geneva.
In recognition of his contributions, the Hobart Class of 2010 named him an honorary member, and in 2018 he received HWS’ Distinguished Faculty Award, the highest award a faculty member can receive from their former students. In 2019, Pat and Sandy were jointly presented with the Charles H. Salisbury Award in recognition of their decades of service, generosity of spirit and profound investment in HWS and Geneva. At that time, HWS also established the Patrick and Sandra McGuire Study Abroad Fund to make transformative study abroad experiences possible for students who otherwise might not have the means to participate.
Pat’s legacy is measured in the students whose lives he touched, the colleagues and friends he supported, and the enduring connections he and Sandy built.
We will reach out with details about services as soon as they are available.
With care,
President Mark D. Gearan
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA.