Ideas into Action
University College Cork is pleased to announce the national launch of the Future Humanities Institute (FHI) on Thursday, 23 April 2026, a landmark moment in the development of UCC Futures and in Ireland’s wider research landscape. The event, themed Ideas into Action, will take place in the Dora Allman Room from 2pm followed by a reception, research showcase, and the launch of FHI’s newest research cluster in the Aula Maxima.
The event will feature a keynote from Dr. Domhnaill Hernon. Dr Hernon is an award‑winning technology and innovation executive and Global Lead of the EY Intelligent Realities Lab. With a PhD in aerodynamics and a background spanning research leadership at Nokia Bell Labs, creative development, and applied innovation, he is internationally recognised for pioneering work at the intersection of art, technology, imagination and societal transformation.
Domhnaill's work has been featured in Wired, Forbes, Times Square, SXSW, Nasdaq and TEDx, and he advises global cultural and innovation programmes.
About the Future Humanities Institute
The Future Humanities Institute (FHI), a UCC Futures Institute, brings together researchers from across the arts, humanities and collaborating disciplines to help society understand and respond to accelerating social, cultural, technological, political and environmental change.
These global grand challenges are fundamentally human ones. They demand creative responses. They also demand new insight into values, histories, identities, cultures, belief systems and the stories that guide collective action.
Through its Radical Humanities Laboratory and through the work of its thematic clusters, the FHI catalyses and champions the kind of bold arts and humanities-led research that generates these insights. Our researchers actively contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goals, and they shape culture, influence policy, debatesand bring arts and humanities‑driven perspectives into conversation with the sciences, engineering, medicine, sustainability research and industry.
The national launch of the Future Humanities Institute marks a significant moment for UCC and for the wider research landscape in Ireland. It signals the Institute’s commitment to supporting world‑leading scholarship and strengthening national research capacity. We look forward to welcoming colleagues, partners and stakeholders as we begin the next phase of the Future Humanities Institute’s mission.
Event Programme
The event is organised around three thematic ‘Conversations’, each exploring the role of the arts and humanities in imagining, driving and transforming our shared future.
14:00: Opening Session, Dora Allman Room
The event will open with a welcome from Professor Yvon Bonenfant, Director of the Future Humanities Institute, followed by an address from Professor John O’Halloran, President of UCC.
14:30–15:25: Conversation 1: Imagining Our Future
This session is anchored by a keynote from Dr Domhnall Hernon, Global Lead of the EY Intelligent Realities Lab. His presentation: “Why the Future of Innovation Requires Applied Imagination,” examines the vital role that inventiveness and originality play in steering technological innovation and societal change. This keynote will be followed by a response from Professor Stephen Graham, Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences. The Conversation concludes with a series of flash presentations:
Dr Alex Khalil — Harnessing Music’s Neural Infrastructure
Dr Lijuan Qian — Offering Community Agency
Dr Clíona O’Carroll — Cultural Heritage, Community, Action
Break
15:40–16:10: Conversation 2: Motors of Change
Chaired by Professor Whitney Battle‑Baptiste (University of Massachusetts Amherst), this conversation examines how humanities research catalyses social, cultural and institutional transformation.
Opening Statements
Professor Laura McAtackney — Material Memory Matters
Professor Nuala Finnegan — Building Bridges
Dr Dyuti Chakravarty — Migrant Storytelling in Healthcare Research
Dr Barbara Siller — Literary Multilingualism & Social Change
Panel Discussion
How humanities research drives change.
16:10-16:40: Conversation 3: Transforming Our Future
Chaired by Professor Luna Dolezal (University of Exeter), this final conversation examines transformative methodologies for future‑oriented humanities research.
Opening Statements
Dr Kian Mintz‑Woo — Climate Justice in Irish Governance
Dr Rosa Rogers — Climate Storytelling
Dr Eugene Costello — Ecology‑Healing History
Professor Des Fitzgerald — Humanities Brain
Panel Discussion
What makes a method transformative?
Closing Reflections and Reception
A closing response will be offered by Professor Yvon Bonenfant. The reception, which will take place in the Aula Maxima,at 17:10 will feature the launch of the Future Humanities Institute’s newest Research Cluster, as well as research posters and project tables led by:
Dr Conor Linehan and
Contributors' Biographies
Professor Whitney Battle-Baptiste is a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. An activist-scholar from the Bronx, her interdisciplinary work bridges Black Studies, history, and historical archaeology to examine race, gender, class, and sexuality, with research sites across the U.S. and Caribbean. She is the author of Black Feminist Archaeology and co-editor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits.
Professor Eugene Costello is a historian and archaeologist in UCC's School of History and Radical Humanities Laboratory. He has published widely in environmental history and landscape archaeology, including the award-winning book, Transhumance and the Making of Ireland’s Uplands. He is interested in the history of capitalism and resource use, particularly farming. In December 2025 he was awarded a major ERC Consolidator Grant to study the origins of commercial beef and dairy production in Europe.
Professor Yvon Bonenfant (he/him) is a performance-maker, art-maker and researcher. His work explores the sensual power of the unusual voice and body, and with Dr Brice Catherin, explores artistic thinking. Since 2010, his research-creation has focused on unearthing and developing how we best invite participants to explore the virtuosic glory of their own vocal difference. By extension, he is interested in tactile art and performance, haptic visuality, andenvironments that celebrate the artistic expression of unruly bodies. His work and collaborations have shown in 10 countries over 30 years and he has published widely. He is Professor, Theatre; Director, Future Humanities Institute (FHI), and co-Lead UNICArt at UCC.
Dr Dyuti Chakravarty is a Research Ireland-Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Criminology and the Radical Humanities Laboratory in UCC. Her ongoing postdoctoral research looks at racialised migrant women's experiences of pregnancy and maternal healthcare in Ireland. She has previously worked on a WHO funded project that looked at barriers and facilitators to abortion policy implementation in Ireland.
Professor Oliver Davis is a Deputy Director of the FHI, Director of its research cluster, CASiLaC, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures, and a co-convenor of the Political Technologies research group. His own research spans queer studies, political philosophy, French theory and the psychedelic humanities.
Dr Kate Falconer is a Lecturer at UCC, where she is cross-posted with the School of Law and Radical Humanities Laboratory. Her research interests lie in the law of the dead and bodily disposal, and private law's interactions with death, particularly through a critical and socio-legal lens. She is currently working on a Research Ireland-funded project looking at changing body disposal trends in Ireland, and the moves needed to make the Irish funeral industry environmentally and socially sustainable.
Professor Des Fitzgerald is Co-Director of the Radical Humanities Laboratory at UCC. His research aims to explore the connections between the humanities and the biological sciences. His most recent books are The City of Today is a Dying Thing (Faber & Faber, 2025) and The Urban Brain (Princeton University Press, 2023).
Professor Stephen Graham is the Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences at University College Cork, and was formerly Executive Dean of Creative Arts and Media at Goldsmiths, University of London. Stephen's Sounds of the Underground (Michigan) was published in 2016 and Becoming Noise Music (Bloomsbury) in 2023. Stephen co-authored Western Music in the Twentieth Century (2022, CUP), and his Authorship and New Music in the Twenty-First Century is currently under contract with Cambridge.
Dr Alexander Khalil is a Senior Lecturer in Music at University College Cork. His work explores the intersubjective experience of time through music. A specialist in Byzantine chant, and performer in diverse music traditions, he integrates ethnomusicology and cognitive neuroscience to study interpersonal synchrony, from lived musical experience to individual and group-level brain dynamics.
Dr Sarah Kerr is an archaeologist and heritage specialist whose work spans Western Europe. She is currently leading two projects: the first asks if we really understand what a castle is and its role in past and present identity making; the second, explores the connection between ruination aesthetics and Ireland’s housing crisis.
Dr Conor Linehan a Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology at UCC, where he is a member of the People and Technology research group, and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software. Conor’s research expertise focuses on understanding the social and psychological experience of interacting with new technologies.
Dr Kian Mintz-Woo is a Senior Lecturer researching climate ethics and policy. He was a member of the Carbon Budgets Working Group for the Irish government (2024-2025) and officially lead for UCC’s COP28 delegation. In 2025, he was named University College Cork Early-Stage Researcher of the Year.
Professor Laura McAtackney is Professor in Archaeology and Co-Director of the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork. She was previously Associate / Professor in Heritage Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark (2015-2024) and is a Docent in Contemporary Historical Archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research focuses on material-based approaches to understanding institutions, post-conflict and post-colonial societies, and the politics of how they are remembered.
Dr Síle Ní Mhurchú is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish, University College Cork, Ireland. Her research interests include the Fionn Cycle, the study of Irish manuscripts and Irish love poetry (na dánta grá). She is particularly interested in the Fionn lays, narrative poems about Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna, and has published a number of studies on this topic. She is co-editor of The Gaelic Finn Tradition II, a collection of essays on the Fionn Cycle, published in 2022 by Four Courts Press, and is currently writing a monograph on the poetry of the Fionn Cycle. Her work on Irish love poetry includes the co-edited volume Seal re Saobhnós: Essays on Irish Courtly Love Poems, published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 2024.
Dr Maedhbh Nic Lochlainn is a Lecturer in Human Geography and GIS at University College Cork. Her research interests are at the intersection of urban and digital geographies, and she is particularly interested in urban financialisation, housing, and the transformation of urban space as digital/material process.
Dr Clíona O’Carroll is Research Director with the Cork Folklore Project, a community-based centre for oral testimony in the heart of Cork City. The CFP interviews, listens, archives and disseminates memories and experiences of the residents of Cork City and beyond, paying attention to experiences of place, migrancy, labour, wellbeing, creativity and identity. As a co-chair of the SIEF Working Group on Archives, Clíona is active in the development and promotion of archives of tradition locally and internationally.
Dr Jesse D. Peterson (he/him) is a Lecturer with the Radical Humanities Laboratory and Department of Geography at University College Cork. He researches social and cultural responses to environmental change, addressing questions centered on environmental degradation, shifting ecological relationships, biodiversity loss, life and death, water challenges, and epistemic practices.
Dr Lijuan Qian is senior lecturer in music at University College Cork. She is principal investigator of community-engaged ERC project ECura, Everyone’s a Curator: Digitally Empowering Ethnic Minority Music Sustainability in China. ECura develops new digital supports (multilingual audio database and smartphone app) for Indigenous communities in their traditional expressive practices.
Dr Stephen Roddy is a media engineering and composer specialising in sonification. He is currently focused on sonification for the Internet of Sounds (IoS) and ethical approaches to artificial intelligence & machine learning (AI/ML) in creative audio. His work is informed by Cybernetics, Human-Computer Interaction, and Radical Embodied Cognitive Science.
Dr Rosa Rogers is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Yorkshire, based in Cork. Her practice combines fiction, visual and digital forms to communicate complex societal issues. Funded by Met Éireann's TRANSLATE project, she leads climate storytelling research, co-designing creative outputs with communities and advancing innovative approaches to climate communication and engagement.
Dr Barbara Siller is a Literary Scholar in the Department of German, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University College Cork. She is the Chair of the EU COST-Action Literary Multilingualism and Social Transformations in Superdiverse Societies (MultiLiLiTrans EU-Cost Action CA24137 | University College Cork), a 4-year research network with 350 members currently, aiming to foster innovative multilingual literary practices in research, education and literary institutions and establish them as sustainable structures.
Barbara is currently Head of Department of German and Co-convenor of the Research Cluster Rethinking Spatial Humanities. Her research interests include literary multilingualism and translation, literary topographies, generational novels and temporalities in literature.