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 intellectual history of Ulster from 1580 to 1660. The R. J. Hunter Grants Scheme was established in 2014 us...
Feb 25, 2019•1 hr 48 min
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 chaired a panel of Irish women writers who discussed Edgeworth's legacy: Marina Carr Claire Kilroy Eil...
Feb 22, 2019•17 min
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.
Dec 10, 2018•1 hr 20 min
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 creative output in art, art history and archaeology, in addition to her skills as an editor and writer. She...
Nov 30, 2018•1 hr 6 min
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 lecture offers a consideration of Edgeworth's contributions to learning and knowledge in the ninetee...
Nov 23, 2018•41 min
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 academies, and in 1791 was elected honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. This talk will cover her co...
Nov 15, 2018•49 min
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 monuments, he discusses plans for a new national heritage plan ‘Heritage Ireland 2030’, to build a shared...
Nov 13, 2018•20 min
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, UNESCO adopted the Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, highlight the pressing need to a...
Nov 13, 2018•24 min
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? This lecture looks at some of the ways in which these societies resolved the issue over the course of ...
Nov 12, 2018•48 min
...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 Friday Agreement (1998). Focusing on the fates of so-called ‘peace walls’ in Belfast and the enduri...
Nov 05, 2018•16 min
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 participated in the Residential Institutions Redress Board. She closes with a description of how the Mag...
Nov 05, 2018•18 min
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 by 1911. It remained a tenement house until the last families left in the late 1970s. About the Spea...
Oct 25, 2018•20 min
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 the attitude of the State to its records alongside the attitudes of church bodies to theirs. It also s...
Oct 11, 2018•21 min
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, ephemera - but contemporary memory objects are increasingly ‘born digital’ and they can be challenging...
Oct 11, 2018•20 min
... 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 different thinking. Particularly in relation to the kind of museum we want to be, one that is open, a...
Oct 04, 2018•15 min
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 level, and two years in the Irish Diplomatic Service, she was invited by Dr. Françoise Henry to joi...
May 10, 2018•41 min
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 as a molecular scissors, the potential of gene editing to address many challenges in biological syste...
May 02, 2018•58 min
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 tropics. The discovery of ivermectin required innovation, yet rested on simple empirical science. It...
Feb 01, 2018•40 min
Professor Mary McAleese MRIA, former President of Ireland, delivered a discourse entitled ‘The Holy See and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: is a once-promising journey now going backwards?’
Feb 01, 2018•51 min
Catherine Day, MRIA and former Secretary General of the EU Commission, examines and contextualises the landscape of Post Brexit EU. The Academy discourse programme is sponsored by Mason Hayes and Curran.
Jan 30, 2018•1 hr 18 min
Abstract The recent increase in the proportion of the population with obesity and/or type 2 diabetes is a matter of great concern for global public health. The rising incidence of these disorders is clearly attributable to changes in the environment that promote caloric consumption and decrease energy expenditure. However, we need to understand why some individuals are susceptible to obesogenic influences while others remain resistant. Similarly, it would be helpful to have a better insight into...
Jan 08, 2018•46 min
Panel discussion featuring Noel Dorr, author of 'Sunningdale: the search for peace in Norther Ireland', with Seamus Mallon and chaired by Marie Coleman. Belfast, 8 December 2017.
Dec 13, 2017•1 hr 30 min
Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Aileen Douglas, School of English, TCD. The third lecture in our series commemorating the 350th anniversary of Jonathan Swift's birth. Location: Academy House Date: Wednesday 19 July, 2017 Speaker: Aileen Douglas is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and Head of the School of English. Her teaching and research interests focus on eighteenth-century writing. Among her publications are several articles on Jonathan Swift and a co-edited collection, Locating Swift: pap...
Jul 19, 2017•32 min
Library Lunchtime Lecture by Professor David Dickson, MRIA, Department of Modern History, TCD. The second lecture in our series commemorating the 350th anniversary of Jonathan Swift's birth. Location: Academy House Date: Wednesday 12 July, 2017 Speaker: David Dickson is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and Professor of Modern History in Trinity College Dublin. He has published extensively on the social, economic and cultural history of Ireland in the long eighteenth century. Among his major p...
Jul 19, 2017•35 min
Library Lunchtime Lecture by Professor Andrew Carpenter, MRIA, Emeritus Professor of English, UCD. The first lecture in our series commemorating the 350th anniversary of Jonathan Swift's birth. Location: Academy House Date: Wednesday 21 June, 2017 Disclaimer: The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own...
Jul 19, 2017•38 min
Lunchtime Lecture to accompany the Polish Embassy's exhibition on the life and career of Consul-General Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński. Speaker: Ian Cantwell, grandson of the Consul-General Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński Commemorating the birth of diplomatic relations between Poland and Ireland, this lecture accompanies an exhibition focusing on the life and career of Consul-General Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński, the first Polish diplomatic to serve in Ireland and one of the longest-serving diplomats in the h...
May 11, 2017•24 min
Speaker: Dr Bernadette Cunningham, Deputy Librarian, Royal Irish Academy. The Book of Uí Mhaine is one of the most important manuscripts of late medieval Ireland. Its size, scope and extent, the range of texts it encompasses and its illumination all mark it out as one of the outstanding productions of Irish scholarship in this period. Written in the late fourteenth century for Muircheartach Ó Ceallaigh (†1407) Lord-Bishop of Clonfert, and subsequently associated closely with the O’Kelly family, ...
Mar 24, 2017•42 min
Speaker: Deborah Hayden, MU. The Book of Uí Mhaine is one of the most important manuscripts of late medieval Ireland. Its size, scope and extent, the range of texts it encompasses and its illumination all mark it out as one of the outstanding productions of Irish scholarship in this period. Written in the late fourteenth century for Muircheartach Ó Ceallaigh (†1407) Lord-Bishop of Clonfert, and subsequently associated closely with the O’Kelly family, it is a veritable treasure trove of tradition...
Mar 24, 2017•36 min
Speaker: Elizabeth Boyle, Maynooth University. The Book of Uí Mhaine is one of the most important manuscripts of late medieval Ireland. Its size, scope and extent, the range of texts it encompasses and its illumination all mark it out as one of the outstanding productions of Irish scholarship in this period. Written in the late fourteenth century for Muircheartach Ó Ceallaigh (†1407) Lord-Bishop of Clonfert, and subsequently associated closely with the O’Kelly family, it is a veritable treasure ...
Mar 24, 2017•31 min
Speaker: Karen Ralph, New York University's Paris Centre. The Book of Uí Mhaine is one of the most important manuscripts of late medieval Ireland. Its size, scope and extent, the range of texts it encompasses and its illumination all mark it out as one of the outstanding productions of Irish scholarship in this period. Written in the late fourteenth century for Muircheartach Ó Ceallaigh (†1407) Lord-Bishop of Clonfert, and subsequently associated closely with the O’Kelly family, it is a veritabl...
Mar 24, 2017•41 min
