School hosts annual research day

26 Apr 2025

On Thursday, the School of English & Digital Humanities hosted its annual research day, an event which brings emerging and established researchers from English, Digital Humanities, and Creative Writing together to discuss personal and shared research interests.

Organised by School Research Director, Prof. Claire Connolly, the event featured lightning talks, as well as Dr James O'Sullivan 'in conversation with' Prof. Emilie Pine, Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin and author of the critically acclaimed Notes to Self. 

Dr Órla Murphy, Head of the School of English & Digital Humanities, opened the event with the following address:

Dia dhaoibh go léir a dhaoine uaisle, good morning all!

It’s a wonderful privilege as ever, to gather together today, colleagues, and friends—for our second annual research day.

Today is first and foremost a collegial moment, a breath, a space, in a shared place where as a community we can gather to valorise something that is under renewed attack—expert knowledge. It’s been a shocking few months. So this is a celebration not just of research outputs and polished ideas, but of curiosity, community, conversation, experimentation, dialogue and dialectic, and what we all cherish, that’s intrinsic to that expertise, our practice of an urgent criticality—just one of the many facets of academic life that makes our collective expert knowledge possible.

It’s a day where we can pause, breathe, and relish simply being in the room together, thinkers, makers, and critics expressing and living our academic freedom. This work matters, our work matters. It matters not only for what it produces, but for how it helps us understand the complex, contested, and contemporarily threatened dimensions of being human we’re here together practicing, in a profoundly pro-social and values-driven way, being together, being academics, being experts.

Thank you as always for your generosity of mind, sharing the freedom of your thought, your intellectual labour, and most importantly your care for your students for the next generation.

PhDs! It’s great you are the catalysts to accelerate this reaction at the start of this day. We are looking forward to hearing your ambition, your dedication and the originality of your thinking. We all know the path of doctoral research can be sometimes lonely, but it is also luminous and we hope that gathering today you’ll see that you are not alone. You are part of a School that is in turn cheering you on, challenging you, and learning from you.

To all the rest of us supervisors, advisors, colleagues and friends: we know that research thrives through dialogue, encouragement, and honesty.

This day is also a reflection and celebration of all that shared work, draft after steady draft. So let’s enjoy today everyone—with our characteristic generosity of thought, listening generously, asking questions generously, and celebrating the wide wild range of ideas that bring all of us in the School of English and Digital Humanities.

Here’s to a day of insight, of imagination, and connection. Thank you all for showing up—because that’s the first step, we show up for each other, with each other —It’s my great pleasure to hand over to Dr Maureen O Connor, chair of the School’s Graduate Studies Committee to begin our first session.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.