Research News Archive
A round-up of College News and Events in 2020
Read the new from the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences in 2020
April | May | June | September | October | November | December
April 2020
New Collaboration between UCC, RTÉ and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht
The War of Independence on RTÉ History is a new online project that commemorates the centenaries of key events in the conflict. Over the course of 2020 and 2021 the site will offer accounts and explainers for crucial events from the formation of the First Dáil and the Soloheadbeg ambush, through Bloody Sunday and the Burning of Cork City right up to the signing of the Treaty in 1921 accompanied by image galleries and interactive maps.
The project is the product of a partnership between RTÉ, University College Cork / Atlas of the Irish Revolution and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Since its launch in Dublin in 2017 the Atlas of the Irish Revolution has been widely acclaimed nationally and internationally for the scope of its vision and its original approach to research on the revolutionary years in Ireland. One of the objectives of the Atlas of the Irish Revolution project from the beginning was to engage digital learners with ongoing and innovative research and this new partnership provides a perfect vehicle for achieving these aims. while adding another significant layer to its outstanding achievement in terms of public scholarship. Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan acknowledged the importance of the partnership ‘I am delighted to see the fruition of this project, building on the great success of the Atlas of the Irish Revolution…It is a great example of what can be achieved through collaboration and partnership invested with creativity, credibility and experience’ .
Professor Caitríona Ní Dhúill (Department of German) publishes a new monograph
Professor Caitríona Ní Dhúill (Department of German) has published a new monograph, Metabiography: Reflecting on Biography (Palgrave Macmillan), part of the Palgrave Studies in Life Writing series (general editors Clare Brant and Max Saunders, Centre for Life Writing Research, King's College London). Metabiography reflects on the contradictions of biography and argues for new approaches to the genre. It shows how discussions of metafiction (Ansgar Nünning, Patricia Waugh) and metahistory (Hayden White) can be re-invigorated and re-oriented with reference to biography.
The book charts shifting approaches to the writing and reading of biographies, from post-hagiographical attitudes of the Enlightenment, heroic biographies of Romanticism and irreverent modernist portraits through to contemporary experiments in politically committed and hybrid forms of life writing. Through detailed analyses of biographies and writings on biography from Samuel Johnson, Thomas Carlyle, the Bloomsbury modernists, their German contemporaries, through to contemporary biographers, memoirists and authors of biofiction in German and English, Ní Dhúill shows how biographies can destabilise the models of historical visibility, cultural prominence and narrative coherence that the genre itself seems to uphold.
Addressing the fraught relationships between genre and gender, private and public, image and text, life and narrative that play out in the modern biographical tradition, Metabiography suggests new possibilities for reading, writing and thinking about this enduringly popular genre. - Professor Ní Dhúill's work is part of an emerging cluster of research into life writing, auto/biography and forms of self- and other-inscription within the Department of German, the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and CASiLaC.
Two School Postdoctoral Fellows Awarded Royal Irish Academy and British Academy Funding
School postdoctoral fellow Dr James Smith - together with Drs Sarah Bezan of Sheffield University and Richard Gorman of Exeter University - has been awarded seed funding of €2,000 by the Royal Irish Academy and British Academy as a result of a joint event for early career researchers organised by the academies in February. The funded event is on the topic of Coastal Blue Humanities, and will take place at the University of Exeter in the summer of 2020. It will provide an opportunity for scholars and stakeholders to share knowledge that will aid them in encounters with complex entangled webs of agency mediating the relationships between human coastal cultures and coastal biodiversity. James is a member of the Ports, Past and Present project based at UCC and funded by the European Regional Development Fund Through the Ireland Wales Co-operation Programme.
Separately, Dr Seán Hewitt (a Government of Ireland Research Fellow in the School of English), along with Dr Ailise Bulfin (UCD) and Dr Melissa Dickson (University of Birmingham) have been awarded seed funding for a collaborative, international and public project, 'Climate Chaos'. The project will explore nineteenth-century literary engagements with climate crisis and capital, and will be hosting its first public event later in the year.
CACSSS Postdoc wins Charlemont Grant
Dr. Rebecca Boyd, an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, wins a prestigious Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Grant. Dr. Boyd will travel to Denmark later this year to work with Dr. Sarah Croix and Professor Søren Sindbaek on her project Early Urban Centres: Building Connections Across the Viking World. The 9th century was one of upheaval and change across northern Europe, with the death of Charlemagne, waves of Viking raids, and the emergence of a new type of settlement – towns.
Recent excavations by Aarhus’ Northern Emporium project in Ribe uncovered new evidence for Denmark’s first town. The Charlemont award enables Dr. Boyd to explore comparisons between Ribe and Dublin, Ireland’s first town, famously founded by Vikings in the 9th century. Dr. Boyd’s research connects Irish Viking archaeology to current research agendas concerning the emergence of urbanism, trade and social networks, and the beginning of the Viking world.
May 2020
Dr. Barbara Siller (Department of German), co-publishes an edition on literary multilingualism
The book titled Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen (publishing house praesens / Vienna) positions itself between academia and literary arts and focuses on the connection between texts by contemporary multilingual writers and scholarly works. While the writers reflect on their relationship with their languages, literary scholars respond to their work and debate literary multilingualism from a theoretical standpoint.
The book features original works from prominent multilingual authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as Bachtyar Ali, Marica Bodrožić, Anne Cotten, Tomer Gardi, Olga Grjasnowa, Barbi Marković, José F. A. Oliver, Katja Petrowskaja, Dragica Rajčić, Ilma Rakusa, Saša Stanišić, Michael Stavarić, Sina Tahayori and of the artist Himani Gupta (cover).
The responses to the literary work include contributions by Natalia Blum-Barth (Mainz), Monika L. Behravesh (Kassel), Deirdre Byrnes (Galway), Núria Codina Solà (Leuven), Renata Cornejo (Ustí nad Labem), Anne Fleig (Berlin), Walter Schmitz (Dresden), Silke Schwaiger (Wien), Barbara Siller (Cork), Johann Strutz (Klagenfurt), Masahiko Tsuchiya (Nagoya), Sandra Vlasta (Mainz) and Stefan Weidner (Köln).
The volume features an essay by Barbara Siller in which she engages with the poetry of José F. A. Oliver arguing that his dialogical, pluricultural and plurilingual poetry not only entered contemporary German language and literature but also advanced it significantly. While the potential of literary multilingualism has been overlooked for some time, even by literary German scholars themselves, Siller’s contribution reflects the productivity of multilingualism for literature which, in the case of Oliver, has lead to a highly original and unique poetology.
Among several interviews the volume also displays two interviews carried out by Barbara Siller with the Iranian-Austrian writer Sina Tahayori and the Bosnian-German writer Saša Stanišić; the latter was awarded the German book prize in 2019 for his novel ‚Herkunft‘ (‚Origin‘).
Cork Movie Memories - Dan O’Connell and Gwenda Young (Department of Film and Screen Media
Movie Memories, a documentary exploring cinema-going in Cork County, is now available to view online at https://youtu.be/HS8VjWYpSfs and also at https://vimeo.com/285104414
The film is a production of the Cork Movie Memories project, led by Dan O’Connell and Gwenda Young of the Department of Film and Screen Media at UCC, and it was funded by Creative Ireland/Cork County Council and College of Arts, Celtic Studies, Social Sciences.
Produced in 2018, it received its premiere at the Fastnet Film Festival in Schull, Cork and had its international debut at the Chicago Irish Film Festival (2019). Since then, it has been screened nationally as part of Access Cinema’s Bealtaine programme (2019), at events for Heritage Week and Cork Lifelong Learning Festival, and at community centres, universities and film clubs, both national and international.
Movie Memories features a host of interviews with cinema-goers from the 1930s to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the significance that cinema (fixed and travelling) had in the lives of rural communities. Filmed in locations throughout the county, the production blends archival material, atmospheric shots of abandoned cinemas, aerial footage of rural Cork and an array of interviews with cinema-goers from across the generations.
Movie Memories is part of a larger research project that seeks to record and research memories of cinema-going and cinemas in County Cork and that has yielded an extensive online archive; a major Exhibition “Cork Cinemas” at the Cork City Library Grand Parade; conference presentations; and community outreach events
Email: g.young@ucc.ie or danieloconnell@ucc.ie
Postgraduate Researchers from MA in Medieval History produce Mapping Cork online exhibition
Mapping Cork: Trade, culture and politics in medieval and early modern Ireland is a new online exhibition curated and overseen by Elaine Harrington, UCC Library’s Special Collections Assistant Librarian and Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, Senior Lecturer, School of History.
The exhibition has been created by four MA in Medieval History students: Andrew Neville, Emmanuel Alden, Patrick McKee and David O’Mahony, as part of the HI6091 module, with an introduction written by Dr Diarmuid Scully, Lecturer in Medieval History, School of History, UCC. It was launched on 18th May 2020 as a series of five blog posts published daily on the UCC’s Library River-side portal
This online exhibition uses a map of Cork from the early seventeenth-century Civitates orbis terrarum housed by UCC's Special Collections to explore the themes of urban and national identity with a particular focus on Cork city as a centre of trade, culture and politics. The exhibition celebrates the ongoing collaboration between Special Collections and the MA in Medieval History programme; this collaboration has already brought about three other online exhibitions inspired by the Library’s rare books and facsimiles: The Luttrell Psalter, The Book of Kells and Viking Cork. We thank Dr Hiram Morgan and Dr Diarmuid Scully for their comments and advice on the text of the blog, and Peter Finnegan for his talk on the Blackstone Launchpad facilities available to postgraduate students. More importantly, the project has been completed during the COVID-19 crisis and its completion is a great testimony to the value of teamwork and collegiality, and the commitment of the MA students to produce high quality research during challenging times.
A page with maps of four Irish towns (Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork) in Civitates orbis terrarum, Cologne, 1618. Special Collections, UCC
Dr. Rachel MagShamhrain (Head of Department of German) publishes a co-edited collection on Adaptation
Dr. Rachel MagShamhrain (Head of Department of German) has just published a co-edited collection with Palgrave Macmillan on Adaptation: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030251604 as part of the Adaptation in Theatre and Performance Series (general editors Angelaki, V. and Reilly, K.): 'Process and Practice, Adaptation Considered as a Collaborative Art'. The volume considers what is revealed about the relatively new discipline of adaptation studies when the act of adaptation is considered from the point of view of its collaborative processes.
Taking its case studies from across a range of fields of creative practice from literature to theatre, film and fine art, and bringing these fields into dialogue with one another, the volume has been positively reviewed as a unique contribution to the field: "[W]hile adaptation studies is a vibrant area for research publication, nothing like this is currently on the market [...] As such, I expect it to have a good shelf life." The volume features a contribution by Rachel MagShamhrain on adaptation as an act of "orthobiography", in which she considers possible creative interventions into the life and writing of dead authors. This research forms part of the emerging Research Cluster in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures on Life Writing.
(Non)Spectacular Infrastructure: Enacting Resource Circulation in Stages, Studios and Communities
Dr Jeremy Brice, London School of Economics and Political Science / Dr Joanna Hofer-Robinson, University College Cork / Dr Adam O’Brien, University of Reading
This BA-funded project emerges from a Knowledge Frontiers symposium on ‘natures, cultures, communities’ held in Dublin in early 2020, by the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy. It sets out to explore the points of intersection between infrastructure, politics and representation - and in particular how infrastructure alternates between mundane invisibility and spectacular foregrounding.
Typically defined as a technical precondition of the exchanges and circulations which compose the taken-for-granted background of everyday life, infrastructures create expectations of the seamless availability of goods, services and mobilities and in so doing they cease to attract notice. They can also be enrolled into repertoires of political spectacle, whether through the construction and public display of cutting edge structures and networks as emblems of state power and modernity or through employment of apocalyptic images of catastrophic infrastructural failure to articulate socio-economic dysfunction. In both cases the potencies of infrastructure are mediated through repertoires of representation, meaning that creative work has the capacity to question and unsettle these registers of visibility, and thus to catalyse critical enquiry into their political work.
(Non)spectacular Infrastructure is designed to have two key components: a reading-group symposium exploring critical texts which engage with which engage with questions of infrastructural (in)visibility, involving the project leaders and invited contributors; a practice-as-research workshop, organised around the staging of extracts from Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight (1867), a play animated by the spectacular representation of infrastructure.
Dr. Marica Cassarino (School of Applied Psychology) awarded Royal Irish Academy and British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Network Funding
Dr. Marica Cassarino, Lecturer and Researcher at the School of Applied Psychology, has been awarded a Knowledge Frontiers Network Seed Fund (£2,000.00) by the British Academy and Royal Irish Academy for a collaborative project that aims to build interdisciplinary capacity for the promotion of wellbeing in urban planning and policy. Dr. Cassarino co-leads the project together with Dr. Sara Biscaya, Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Salford and Dr Sina Shahab, Lecturer in Planning and Environmental Policy at Cardiff University.
Dr. Cassarino received the award following her participation in the UK-Ireland Knowledge Frontiers Symposium on “natures, cultures and communities held in Dublin in February 2020. The award will enable to bridge approaches and methodologies from psychological sciences, urban planning, and data visualisation to better understand how increasingly urbanised lived environments can sustain wellbeing among citizens, particularly among vulnerable and deprived groups.
As part of the project, Dr. Cassarino and her colleagues have begun to work on a systematic review of evidence of the impact of transitions in urban design on the wellbeing of vulnerable groups. The review protocol is available in the Prospero database.
The project will set a path for interdisciplinary research to address the Sustainable Development Goals “Health and Wellbeing” and “Sustainable cities communities” from the joint perspective of Psychology and Urban planning, with important implications for sustainable urban development.
June 2020
Dr Anne Marie Devlin (Applied Linguistics) publishes a special issue on Study abroad and the Erasmus+ programme in Europe
Against the backdrop of the world’s preeminent study abroad programme, namely Erasmus+, this special issue presents a number of studies which reflect important areas for Erasmus+ participants and researchers. In doing so, the articles highlight a number of emerging key thematic areas in contemporary European research on study abroad, with a particular focus on language development and retention (Magliacane; Hessel); formation of social networks and friendships (Baten); and intercultural guidance during and post sojourn (Moreno Bruna & Goethals and Holfter & Rieder). It does so across a range of languages and geographical contexts including Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy.
In the introduction to the special issue, we offer a short overview of the Erasmus programme in the context of international student mobility. While international student mobility has experienced bigger growth than any other type of global mobility / migration, Erasmus+ is the largest global facilitator and provider of transnational student experiences. Moreover, it is a programme created by a supranational legal, social, political and economic union where the intention of mobility is motivated to bring economic and social benefits to both the European Union and individual citizens across member states. Although the reach of Erasmus+ may seem bounded politically and geographically, it nevertheless plays a significant role within a larger global landscape of student mobility. Against this backdrop, this special issue seeks to highlight recent research directions and findings.
September 2020
Digital Edgeworth Network
The School of English and Digital Humanities received research funding of €12,500 as part of the UK-Ireland Collaboration in Digital Humanities Networking programme, for a project entitled ‘Digital Edgeworth Network’. The DEN is a collaboration between the School of English and Digital Humanities at UCC (PI Dr Clíona Ó Gallchoir, English; Co-I Dr Máirín MacCarron, DH); the Faculty of English Oxford University (PI Prof Ros Ballaster); the Bodleian Library (Oxford); and the National Library of Ireland. The project, which received total funding of €38,000, is jointly sponsored and funded by the Irish Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).
Its aim is to explore and analyze the manuscript archive of the celebrated author Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) and the Edgeworth family, an archive that is divided between the Bodleian and the NLI. The DEN focuses on establishing collaborations between disciplines, between institutions, and between researchers and the community in order to establish optimal approaches to the application of digital tools and methods to this manuscript archive, in order to unlock and enhance its potential for scholarly research and for cultural and heritage tourism in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. The activities funded by the award will also contribute to the development of a 5-year funding bid focused on a major project of digital remediation and analysis of the Edgeworth archive.
Make Film History: Opening up the Archives to Young Filmmakers
As cultural heritage organisations digitise their collections and increase public access, moving image portals like the IFI Player, RTÉ Archives, BFI Player and BBC iPlayer provide audiences with virtual screening rooms to view their shared audiovisual history on demand. But the creative reuse of moving image archive material remains problematic, beset by questions of copyright law, rights clearance and “fair dealing” exceptions, and an audiovisual archives sector without a standardised framework to open up access to this material for creative reuse by filmmakers in education and the community who cannot afford commercial license fees.
The Make Film History network will address this problem by developing a new, sustainable model for the creative reuse of archive material for non-commercial use. This pilot study will offer audiovisual archives within the network a low-risk framework for long-term collaboration with stakeholders working with young filmmakers in education, training and the community. The network will ask: “How can we license moving image archive material for creative reuse? How can the creative reuse of this material increase community engagement with hidden cultural heritage and strengthen communities through new work created by emerging filmmakers reflecting on the past and developing talent for the future?” The project will involve stakeholders in the provision of footage (BBC, BFI, IFI Irish Film Archive, Northern Ireland Screen) and develop educational resources related to creative reuse. It will also liaise with film festivals across the UK and Ireland to host a series of workshops with archivists, broadcasters and independent and commercial filmmakers to explore issues pertaining to copyright, ethics and the aesthetic and illustrative function of archival appropriation in a range of visual forms.
This project was funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council under the ‘UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Networking Call’. Dr Ciara Chambers, University College Cork, PI (Ireland)
October 2020
CACSSS, in association with the Irish Humanities Alliance (Environmental Humanities Working Group) announce 'Humanities for the Anthropocene'.
This one-day research snapshot and networking event, taking place virtually on 7 May 2021, will bring together scholars from across Ireland working in environmental humanities and ecocriticism. The rapidly destabilising ecological context demands new ways of conceiving humanities research. The paradigm of the hypermobile global researcher might be usefully queried and supplemented by an intensified focus on local, regional and national networks and initiatives. To this end, we are seeking to strengthen connections between researchers across the arts and humanities disciplines at all HEIs on the island of Ireland whose research is concerned with the human and cultural dimensions of climate change, environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, and the wider issues associated with the Anthropocene. In a fluid dialogue day structured by brief research snapshot presentations, we aim to share new critical perspectives and methodologies; incubate new research partnerships; develop effective outreach, engagement and activism strategies; and initiate discussions on implications for pedagogy.
The Humanities for the Anthropocene initiative sees itself as part of the wider global effort to 1) bring the critical and creative energies of humanities research to bear on the pressing contemporary concerns of climate change, biodiversity loss and ecological degradation; 2) explore the extent to which environmental / climate crisis is also a crisis of values, ideologies, and symbolic systems; and 3) foster new and daring rethinks of the ‘local/global’ nexus. Expressions of interest, together with a brief bio (100 words) and a short statement (150 words) outlining your research as relevant to the event theme, are invited by 11 December 2020. Contact: Prof. Caitríona Ní Dhúill (German, UCC) caitriona.nidhuill@ucc.ie
Issue 19 of Alphaville published by The Department of Film and Screen Media
The Department of Film and Screen Media at UCC has announced the publication of the new issue of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Alphaville:
Alphaville Issue 19 – https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.19
The issue is characterised by a distinct focus on intermediality, interartiality and intertextuality. While covering diverse generic and geographical areas, both of the issue’s main sections (“Performing the Intermedial across Brazilian Cinema”, a selection of articles and interviews curated by Tamara Courage and Albert Elduque, and “Music Videos in the British Screen Industries and Screen Heritage”, a dossier edited by Emily Caston) aim to shed light on some of the ways in which music and the moving image have intersected historically, giving rise to particular formats, genres and instances of medium hybridity.
The ambition of this issue of Alphaville is all at once to pay due attention to specific films, genres, traditions and styles, to promote the scholarly understanding of neglected areas of study, and to contribute fresh thinking to the open debate on the most responsive methodological tools to characterise and analyse the intermedial in film and video.
Dr Adam Hanna publishes Architectural Space and the Imagination: Houses in Literature and Art from Classical to Contemporary
Dr Adam Hanna (Lecturer in Irish Literature) has co-edited a new book with Jane Griffiths (Wadham College, Oxford University). Architectural Space and the Imagination: Houses in Literature and Art from Classical to Contemporary came out of a conference that the two editors organised in Oxford in 2016. For two days scholars from all over the world, including UCC's Dr Heather Laird, talked about the imaginary spaces writers have created, and about the impressions that real spaces have made on writers' imaginations.
This book sheds light on the intimate relationship between built space and the mind, exploring the ways in which architecture inhabits and shapes both the memory and the imagination. Examining the role of the house, a recurrent, even haunting, image in art and literature from classical times to the present day, it includes new work by both leading scholars and early career academics, providing fresh insights into the spiritual, social, and imaginative significances of built space. Further, it reveals how engagement with both real and imagined architectural structures has long been a way of understanding the intangible workings of the mind itself.
Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan begins an IRC New Foundations project titled Agency and ageing in place in rural Ireland
Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan, School of Applied Social Studies and ISS21, UCC has been awarded an IRC New Foundations award for a project titled ‘Agency and ageing in place in rural Ireland.’ The project involves collaboration with Age Action to explore the housing preferences of older people in rural Ireland and aims to identify how to build capacity in rural communities to meet these preferences.
Age-friendly initiatives and sheltered housing primarily concentrate on urban areas, whereas it is far less understood how best to respond to the unique housing needs of dispersed ageing rural dwellers. A participatory survey and focus groups with Age Action will identify the views of older rural dwellers about ageing in place and the enablers and barriers they face, which will inform the role of civic, voluntary and state organisations in facilitating ageing in place.
The project will be supported by an inter-sectoral advisory group, including Age Action, Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, HSE and academics from Social Work and Applied Psychology in UCC.
Launch of new research cluster on 'Life Writing'
Researchers from across the University with an interest in Life Writing are invited to the launch of a new research cluster, dedicated to exploring life writing in all its forms. The Life Writing cluster focuses on the inscription of ‘selves’ and ‘others’ and the recording of memories and experiences in auto/biography, autofiction and memoir, diaries, letters, new media and the visual arts. The launch will feature papers by Rebecca Braun (Lancaster University) on 'The Past, Present and Future of Life Writing' and by Helen Finch (University of Leeds) on 'Life writing in the aftermath of the Shoah: an undisciplined genre?, followed by a roundtable discussion.
Cork’s Three Faiths Forum are delighted to launch The Pocket Facts Guide for Jewish, Christian and Muslim People 2020.
The Cork Three Faiths Forum has been meeting since May 2016. It brings together members of the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and seeks to create a space where people of faith can dialogue openly and respectfully, come to a better understanding of each other’s faith, and work together to enhance tolerance, cooperation and friendship in society.
This pocket guide initiative is a small step in helping us understand our neighbour a little better. Jews, Christians and Muslims are as diverse as the trees in the world so don’t expect all the answers in this small guide. We hope that this guide will begin a conversation between us and hopefully move us to reach out to each other (socially distant, at this time!) as we embrace the challenges that modern society poses to us all.
Thank you to St Philip's Centre in Leicester for the idea of these booklets and for much of the content which was amended to reflect all three of the faiths represented in Cork 3FF. This Pocket Guide was produced with a grant obtained from the Westhill Foundation in 2020. The Pocket Facts Guide for Jewish, Christian and Muslim People 2020 will be launched at Cork City Council with Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Joe Kavanagh, Ardmhéara Chorcaí on Tuesday 6th October 2020 at 3:30pm. For further questions or queries please contact Dr. Amanullah De Sondy amanullah.desondy@ucc.ie or Revd Canon Elaine Murray emitincork@gmail.com
November 2020
Dr Sarah Foley, a Lecturer in the School of Applied Psychology, awarded an NUI Grant for Early Career Academics.
Based in the School of Applied Psychology, Sarah's research is at the intersection of Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) . She is currently working on research to examine the meaning of care in the context of technology and design, and the implications for designing for care in contexts including ageing , community, and relational care. The NUI Grant for Early Career Academics is supporting Sarah to disseminate this research at International HCI conferences and develop further applied research projects on care with her network of colleagues, in Ireland and Internationally.
Dr Aodh Quinlivan publishes Forgotten Lord Mayor: Donal Óg O’Callaghan, 1920-1924
100 years ago, Donal Óg O’Callaghan was elected as Cork’s fourth Lord Mayor of 1920, in succession to Terence MacSwiney. He remained in office until January 1924. During this time, he was also Chairman of Cork County Council, a TD in the second Dáil and Éamon de Valera’s Special Republican envoy to the US.
To mark the occasion, Dr Aodh Quinlivan has published as part of Cork City Council’s commemoration programme and with the support of the CACSSS Research Publication Fund. He also contributed a piece on the remarkable political life of Donal Óg O’Callaghan on RTÉ Brainstorm.
Launch of 'What keeps us going?' Discussion forum and reading group
2020-21 will go down as a memorably challenging academic year. 'What keeps us going?' is a discussion series established by Caitríona Ní Dhúill (caitriona.nidhuill@ucc.ie) and / or Gert Hofmann (g.hofmann@ucc.ie) to allow staff and postgraduates from CACSSS to meet together on a regular basis to reflect on shared challenges, exchange thoughts about our work in the humanities disciplines, share what matters to us as scholars and teachers, draw on our research as a source of continuity, consolation and critical insight in times of difficulty, and provide each other with support.
Each meeting takes as its starting point a brief reading introduced by a participant in the discussion. In our first meeting (1 October 2020), we discussed Wilhelm von Humboldt's 'On the Spirit and Organisational Framework of Intellectual Institutions' (1809), a founding text of the modern university. Subsequent sessions discussed Martha Nussbaum's manifesto Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010) and Robert Vitalis's study of the disciplinary origins of international relations, White World Order, Black Power Politics (2015). Our discussions have touched on questions of spontaneity and autonomy in scholarship, which run counter to the top-down or centralised research agendas of government and industry; precarity in academic employment, which poses grave challenges to the flourishing of uncoerced research; relationships between science and scholarship, teaching, and the transformation of character and cultivation of self; the politics of disciplinary formation and identity; and the productive tension between the — implicitly individual —autonomous subject of reason and the collective or collaborative aspects of scholarly communities. Throughout, we ponder the vast changes the pandemic has wrought on our academic landscape.
December 2020
Marie Kelly (Department of Theatre, School of Film, Music & Theatre) announces the publication of Scene 8 Volumes 1 and 2 (2021) – Special Issue: ‘Performance and Ireland’ (Intellect)
This is the first peer-reviewed international journal since the early 2000s to focus on performance studies as it relates to Ireland. The collected articles explore a range of artistic practices as well as for studying different indigenous, migrant and diasporic Irish cultures through the lenses of performance and performativity. Collectively, across the two volumes, the articles examine the pivotal role that performance has played in constructing and negotiating Irish identities within and beyond the island of Ireland, historically as well as in contemporary life and artistic practice.
The scope of the journal is aligned with the interdisciplinary field of performance studies, particularly in relation to visuality, spectacle and display. As such, it also connects with Shannon Jackson’s claim that ‘visual culture seems to require performance for its seeing to be shown’ (2005: 164). The fourteen articles included in this double special issue offer fresh perspectives on the global field of Irish Studies by supplementing the traditional literary leanings of that field with examinations of more ephemeral, experiential and multimedia phenomena. Contributors traverse such often intersecting areas as the culture, art and activism of feminist, LGBTQ+, migrant and minority communities; gender studies, critical race theory and postcolonial perspectives; the Troubles, the Peace Process and the Irish Border; Ireland and Irishness in international and globalized contexts; site-specific performance; commemoration, memory and hidden histories and/as performance; and digitized and technologically mediated engagements with Ireland and Irishness. Several authors analyse and reflect on their own experience as artists, activists, performers and/or audience members, sometimes blurring these classifications.
Read the editorial by Marie Kelly, Siobhàn O'Gorman and Áine Philips and articles by a range of scholars here
NUI Awards Grant for #DouglassWeek
Dr Tim Groenland (IRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English) has been awarded an NUI Grant for Early Career Academics to develop #DouglassWeek – an all-island, creative and collaborative event series commemorating the 1845/6 visit to Ireland of famed abolitionist, writer, and orator Frederick Douglass.
The event, organised by Groenland and fellow early career scholars Dr Caroline Schroeter and Sarah McCreedy, will run from the 8th to the 14th of February 2021 and will feature a variety of performative events, creative installations and critical discussions, offering a collection of responses to Douglass’s footprint in Ireland and connecting his legacy to contemporary activism around issues of equality, race, and migration. The team are collaborating with students, artists, writers and community groups around Ireland and beyond; they are also working with the support of the Frederick Douglass Family and the US Embassy in Ireland, giving the event a transatlantic dimension that will reflect the cultural encounter of Douglass’s visit.
The events will feature public participation (a poetry competition, for example, with the winning entry to be read by acclaimed actor Roger Guenveur Smith), and the organisers invite “Creative Commemorations” from the college community.