This is episode 45 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north and south. Host Rory Montgomery, MRIA, talks to authors of articles on topics such as cross border health co-operation; the need to regulate social media in referendums, education, cultural affairs and constitutional questions and the imperative for good data and the need to carry out impartial research. ARINS:...
Jun 05, 2025•51 min
As part of Biodiversity Week 2025, Dr Carla Mateus delivered a lunchtime lecture in the Royal Irish Academy on the topic of historical meteorological records held in the Academy Library's archive collections. Historical meteorological observations are crucial to better assess past climate variability and trends and the frequency, intensity, duration, and distribution of extreme weather events, and to put the current climate change into historical context. The records preserved in the archives of...
May 28, 2025•48 min
In the fifth episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Claire Mitchell. Claire Mitchell is a writer and researcher from Belfast. She writes about people and everyday politics in Northern/Ireland, using interviews, memoir, archives and storytelling. Her latest book, The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798, was published in 2022. Clare was formerly a senior lecturer in Sociology at Queen’s University Belfast and holds a BA, PhD & ...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 10 min
In this month’s ARINS podcast, host Rory Montgomery discusses the recent UCL Constitution Unit report ‘Reform of Stormont: Options for Discussion’ with its authors, Conor Kelly, Alan Renwick and Alan Whysall. This is episode 44 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north and south. Host Rory Montgomery, MRIA, talks to authors of articles on topics such as cross border heal...
May 01, 2025•59 min
This is episode 4 of the My Identity podcast series hosted by Professor Colin Graham, Maynooth. In this series, Colin is in conversation with a range of people whose ideas, work and life experiences shed light on the topic of identity on the Island of Ireland. My Identity is part of the ARINS project. Colin Graham is Professor English and formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Maynooth University. His books include Northern Ireland: Thirty Years of Photography, Deconstructing Ireland and Ideolo...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr
In this month’s ARINS podcast, former Deputy First Minister and leader of the SDLP, Mark Durkan discusses his political career with host Rory Montgomery. The conversation focuses on the recent book by Professor Graham Spencer, The SDLP, Politics and Peace: the Mark Durkan interviews which was published in 2024 by Peter Lang. This is episode 43 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of ...
Apr 02, 2025•56 min
In the third episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Manchán Magan. This episode is a recording of a public conversation which took place in Dublin on 4 February 2025. Manchán Magan has written books on his travels in Africa, India and South America. He writes occasionally for The Irish Times, and presents the Almanac of Ireland podcast for RTÉ. He has made dozens of documentaries on issues of world culture for TG4, RTÉ, & Travel Channel. His books ...
Mar 19, 2025•56 min
A Walnut Wound is set in July 1795. A young girl is brought to the Grangegorman House of Industry when her family becomes homeless following their eviction. This is the third episode of the Flighty Creatures trilogy of short stories for podcast by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Inspired by women who dwelt in the Grangegorman Asylum, Penitentiary and Workhouse, these stories are set in the 18th and 19th centuries. Listen back to episode one, The Holding Room, which follows Asylum Attendant ...
Mar 11, 2025•15 min
Held on 21 January 2025, and jointly organised by the Royal Irish Academy and the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, this seminar looked to add impetus to the implementation of the national policy approach being advanced by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.
Mar 10, 2025•2 hr 58 min
In this month’s ARINS podcast, Professor Brendan O’Leary (UPenn), Professor John McGarry (QUB), Dr Dawn Walsh (UCD) and Dr James Pow (QUB) together with host Rory Montgomery MRIA discuss the recently published results of surveys conducted in 2024. The discussion covers opinions on membership of NATO and the Commonwealth, attitudes towards immigration, the role of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and emotional responses to potential constitutional change. More information on the sur...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr
By the Spider's Bed is the story of an older inmate of the Women’s Penitentiary, awaiting transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. This is the second episode of the Flighty Creatures trilogy of short stories for podcast by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Inspired by women who dwelt in the Grangegorman Asylum, Penitentiary and Workhouse, these stories are set in the 18th and 19th centuries. Listen back to episode one, The Holding Room, which follows Asylum Attendant Muriel Hill facing a quandary...
Mar 04, 2025•20 min
The Holding Room follows Attendant Muriel Hill, facing a quandary when her patient refuses to have her image captured by the asylum photographer. This is the first episode of the Flighty Creatures trilogy of short stories for podcast by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Inspired by women who dwelt in the Grangegorman Asylum, Penitentiary and Workhouse, these stories are set in the 18th and 19th centuries. Flighty Creatures is a project of Grangegorman Histories' public call. Find out more a...
Feb 25, 2025•21 min
In the second episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with NI Justice Minister and Leader of the Alliance Party, Naomi Long MLA. This episode is a recording of a public conversation which took place in Dublin on 6 December 2024. A lifelong resident of East Belfast, and politically active since her early twenties, Naomi first joined Belfast City Council as an Alliance Party councillor in 2001. She was subsequently elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as M...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 10 min
The Asylum Workshop: a performers perspective is the fourth in the Grangegorman Histories podcast series exploring the histories of the Grangegorman area of north, inner-city Dublin. Evie O’Brien is an actor and performer. As a drama student at the Grangegorman campus of TU Dublin. Evie played a central role in the Asylum Workshop play, a documentary-drama written by playwright Colin Murphy, directed by Peter McDermott and performed by final year TU Dublin students in June 2023, supported by Gra...
Feb 06, 2025•10 min
In this month’s ARINS podcast, Dr Ida Milne and Dr Ian d’Alton, with host Rory Montgomery, discuss the lives of Southern Irish Protestants, including their own experiences. The conversation focuses on their 2019 co-edited collection of essays, Protestant and Irish: The minority’s search for place in independent Ireland, https://bit.ly/3Cous3i and Ian d’Alton’s 2024, Southern Irish Protestants: Histories, Lives and Literatures. Reviewed recently in the Irish Times: https://bit.ly/3EqdrX2. This is...
Feb 06, 2025•58 min
In the first episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth University) is in conversation with Dr Gail McConnell (QUB). Gail discusses her identity, and her uneasiness around discussing identity. The conversation explores themes including queerness, parenting, religion and the murder of Gail’s father and its resultant influence on her work. Gail is the author of The Sun is Open (Penned in the Margins, 2021), Northern Irish Poetry and Theology (Palgrave, 2014), and two pamphlets of po...
Jan 22, 2025•48 min
In this month's ARINS podcast Stephen Roulston and Martin Brown, with host Rory Montgomery, discuss education systems in Ireland. Their recent paper is 'A Century of Growing Apart and Challenges of Coming Together: Education Across the Island of Ireland'. Read the article in full here: https://bit.ly/3BCCZyX This is episode 40 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north an...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Religion has played a huge role in the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland. There has been little comparative analysis, however, of the legal elements of this topic. Prof Oran Doyle, Prof David Kenny & Prof Christopher McCrudden discuss, with host Rory Montgomery, their recent paper on the convergence and divergence in religious law on the Island of Ireland, North and South. Read more here: https://bit.ly/49e4tYf This is episode 39 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based researc...
Dec 02, 2024•59 min
This episode, Birnie Esmond, Senior Economist in the Ulster University Business School discusses his recent paper 'Trading Places: Continuity and Change in Northern Ireland's Trading Relationships' with John FitzGerald, Adjunct Professor of the Department of Economics Trinity College Dublin, and host Rory Montgomery. The paper is available to read here: https://bit.ly/3NSWCFE This is episode 38 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questio...
Nov 07, 2024•59 min
On Monday, 7 October, Nicholas Canny MRIA delivered this lecture as part of the Dublin Festival of History in the Royal Irish Academy. Spenser’s View has, for centuries, been treated variously as a trove of prejudiced antiquarian lore useful for disparaging Irish people at moments of crisis, and as a store house of evidence that the English government engaged upon an Irish genocide in Elizabethan times. This lecture by Nicolas Canny, MRIA, offers a radical re-appraisal of the manuscript copy tha...
Oct 10, 2024•46 min
In this month's ARINS podcast host Rory Montgomery discusses the paper 'Beyond unionism and nationalism: do the ‘neithers’ want a border poll and a United Ireland?' with one of its authors, Jon Tonge, Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool. Read the article in full here: https://bit.ly/3XPHHkb This is episode 37 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north and...
Oct 03, 2024•45 min
Panel discussion on the consequences of the European Parliament elections that took place on the 24th of September 2024. The members of the panel were Francis Jacobs (former head of the European Parliament Office, Dublin), Sarah Collins (Brussels correspondent, Business Post) and Professor Ben Tonra, MRIA (UCD). It was chaired by Iulia Siedschlag (ESRI). Francis Jacobs, in his analysis of the EP election results, confirmed that the EPP had been a clear winner, increasing its seat share. The S &a...
Oct 02, 2024•37 min
On Wednesday 21 August 2024, ecologist and author, Richard Nairn, delivered a lunchtime lecture in the Royal Irish Academy as part of National Heritage Week 2024 entitled 'Richard J. Ussher: Chronicling the Birds of Ireland'. Richard John Ussher MRIA, 1841-1913, was a speleologist, ornithologist and the main author of Ussher & Warren, The Birds of Ireland (1900), a seminal publication in the history of Irish ornithology that provides an early benchmark by which we can measure the decline of ...
Sep 10, 2024•41 min
Host Rory Montgomery is joined by Brice Dickson and Aoife O'Donoghue in this month's ARINS podcast. They discuss the topic of Dickson's recent paper (written with Tom Hickey) on how British and/or Irish nationality is currently acquired and lost, first under the law in Northern Ireland and then under the law in Ireland. This paper also looks at some of the rights that Irish citizens currently have in the UK and that UK citizens currently have in Ireland, paying particular attention to the impact...
Sep 05, 2024•53 min
Dr Evelyn Collins and Niall Crowley, along with host Rory Montgomery, explore the frameworks of equality legislation, institutions and policy mechanisms that underpin the equality agenda in Northern Ireland and in Ireland. Learn more in their recently published paper: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/423/article/912707 This is episode 35 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north...
Jul 04, 2024•54 min
This week, Prof Kieran McEvoy and Dr Cheryl Lawther discuss the politics of apologies within the Northern Ireland Peace Process. This is based of Kieran's recent paper 'Abject and True Remorse': Loyalism and the Politics of Regret in Northern Ireland' which is part of the Irish Studies in International Affairs journal, available at this link https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/423/article/922275 This is episode 34 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significan...
Jun 06, 2024•1 hr 1 min
This episode features Vikram Pakrashi in conversation with Lorraine Hanlon and David McKeown from UCD, who share their experience of working on EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite. Burning Questions is a conversation podcast that shines a spotlight on expertise in the fields of the engineering, mechanics and computer science across the island of Ireland. Each episode is structured around an interview with a leader/leaders in their field who will share insights into projects and research that hav...
May 31, 2024•20 min
Dr Máire Kennedy, Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Early Modern History, Trinity College Dublin Dr Máire Kennedy and Dr Jason McElligott introduce us to institutional and private libraries in early modern Ireland. This is the first event in a three-part series on early modern book collections presented by the Historical Studies Committee and the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. In April / May 2024, The Royal Irish Academy Library and Historical Studies Committee were delighted to present ...
May 21, 2024•17 min
Dr Jason McElligott, Director of Marsh’s Library Dr Máire Kennedy and Dr Jason McElligott introduce us to institutional and private libraries in early modern Ireland. This is the first event in a three-part series on early modern book collections presented by the Historical Studies Committee and the Library of the Royal Irish Academy In April / May 2024, The Royal Irish Academy Library and Historical Studies Committee were delighted to present a three-part lunchtime lecture series on the topic o...
May 21, 2024•21 min
Olivia Lardner, Cataloguer of the Bolton Library, University of Limerick Hear about the experiences of library professionals working with early modern collections today. This is the second event in a three-part series about early modern book collections presented by the Historical Studies Committee and the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. In April / May 2024, The Royal Irish Academy Library and Historical Studies Committee were delighted to present a three-part lunchtime lecture series on the...
May 21, 2024•16 min
