School of History, UCC

Prof Christophe Gillissen, University of Caen, Normandy, France

Thursday 4 March 2021, 16.00 (4 PM)
The paper is delivered via MS Teams. Please, contact Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, School of History, UCC for a Teams link. j.aandewiel@ucc.ie

Paper After Ireland’s admission to the United Nations in 1955, the Irish delegation adopted a progressive stance on decolonisation. French authorities on the other hand were exerting considerable pressure to prevent the UN from condemning their policy in Algeria. If French diplomatic lobbying had some success in Dublin, a study of official archives suggests that Irish authorities were seeking to achieve several objectives at the same time – facilitating Algerian independence, keeping good relations with France, and maintaining the efficacity of the UN as an international organisation – and that the concessions made to France are best understood as part of an overall approach in which results were prioritised over grandstanding. Christophe Gillissen is a professor of Irish studies at the University of Caen in Normandy, France. He teaches Irish and British history at the English department and is head of the research group in Irish studies. He is also president of the Agrégation d’anglais, a national selective examination for future English teachers. His areas of research include Irish foreign policy at the UN, Franco-Irish relations, and Irish participation in the European Union. He has published articles on Irish sovereignty and European monetary integration (Études Irlandaises, 2016) and on the consequences of Brexit for Ireland (Politique internationale, 2018), and is working on a history of Franco-Irish relations.