Global Engagement

Our School is involved in the organisation of the second meeting of the Global Irish Diaspora Congress which will take place in the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

The ninth annual conference of the (opens in a new window)Association of Celtic Students in Ireland and Britain was hosted by our School in a hybrid manner in October 2021.

Chairperson: Stiofán Ó Briain (Teaching Fellow).

Committee: Ailbe van der Heide (Colleague in the National Folklore Collection), Ciaran McDonough (Postdoctoral Fellow),Eoin Mc Evoy (Educational Technologist), Fiona Lyons (PhD student, Irish Studies), Joe Simpson (PhD student, Old Irish), Máire McCafferty (PhD student, Irish).

Dr Kelly Fitzgerald met with visiting PhD scholar Bernadett Vidra from Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary to discuss Irish folklore sources and comparative research in Hungarian and Irish folklore (August 2019).

Our School took part in the UCD iSA China Summer School, giving lectures and workshops on the Irish language and Irish culture to students from China. (August 2019)

Three members of our staff and a number of our graduates participated in the XVI International Congress of Celtic Studies in Bangor University, Wales (July 2019): 

• Dr Dewi Evans: "Ti a chi – a ni a nhw / Ti a chi – and them and us'.
• Dr Kelly Fitzgerald: 'The parish priest, curate and friar; form and function in Irish folklore'.
• Professor Máire Ní Annracháin: 'Changed but not beyond recognition: fresh growth from old tropes of masculinity in contemporary Irish poetry'.
• Dean Farrell (Modern Irish): 'Gendered and genderless voices: the conflicted masculine voice in the literature of Máirtín Ó Cadhain'.
• Stiofán Ó Briain (Modern Irish): '"Easpa gaisce ár linne le buillí beaga á cúiteamh" – Toxic masculinity and the loss of the heroic ideal in Beatha Dhónaill Dhuibh by Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin'.
• Gregory R. Darwin (Folklore): '"Ná cáin a thuilleadh mé": Peig's Mermaid'.

Our School participated in Tionól Gaeilge UCD, organised by Bord na Gaeilge, which attracted students from countries all over the world. (July 2019)

Four of our alumni were awarded Fulbright scholarships to teach the Irish language in the USA for a year (June 2019):

• Sinéad Murray
• Deirdre Murphy
• Caroline Ní Ghallchobhair
• Iseult Ní Rinn Ní Chonchúir

Our Educational Technologist Eoin Mc Evoy participated in a two-week Erasmus+ visit to Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia (June 2019), where he gave workshops on educational technology to staff and lectures on Irish culture and classes in the Irish language to Georgian and Azeri students. 

Professor Sture Ureland of Mannheim University, Germany, donated valuable archive material to the School from his pioneering eurolinguistic research project in 1986-88 on the linguistic skills in English and Irish of bilingual children in the Connemara Gaeltacht. The materials are now housed in the UCD Special Collections. The Irish material is part of a larger collection gathered in bilingual and multilingual communities across Europe. (April 2019) 

A delegation from the School attended the American Conference for Irish Studies in Boston, USA (March 2019):

• Head of School Professor Regina Uí Chollatáin: '"The civilisation of a people is marked by the place of its women; a rule by which the Irish stand high": The Irish Voice in Female Journalism in the Revival Period’.
• Head of Irish Studies Dr Aoife Whelan: '"To the Nations of the World": reporting the first Dáil'
• Director of Lárionad de Bhaldraithe Dr Cathal Billings: 'The Boer War (1899-1902) and Advanced Nationalist Politics in the Gaelic League'
• Our PhD student Fiona Lyons: ‘"Emancipation failed; Fenianism failed; and if the present [language] movement is not persevered in, all hope for Ireland is lost" (O’Neill Russell, New York, 1878): Did the Struggle for Irish Political Independence Hinder Transatlantic and National Language Revival Progress?'

A delegation of postgraduate students from the School attended the Association of Celtic Students Annual Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland (March 2019):

• Dylan Bryans: ‘Modern Irish relative forms ending in “s”; history, contemporary usage and “derelativisation”.’
• Stiofán Ó Briain: ‘“Aicíd Nua-Aoiseach an Fhir Eorpaigh”: An Fireannachas Nimhneach in Beatha Dhónaill Dhuibh le Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin.’
• Ailbe van der Heide: '"Bhí mise faoi gheasa an uair sin": “The Wounded Seal” in Irish oral tradition.’

Head of School Professor Regina Uí Chollatáin was awarded the Newman O'Donnell Fellowship in Irish Studies 2019 to visit St Mary's College and Newman College at Melbourne University, Australia (January-February 2019)

Head of School Professor Regina Uí Chollatáin and Head of Irish Studies Dr Aoife Whelan travelled to China on behalf of the University (December 2018).

Our Summer School in Irish Art & Language, run in conjunction with the UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy, attracted students from Australia, France, Germany and Ireland. (July 2018)

Two of our MA students Dean Farrell and Rebecca Hayes were awarded Ireland-Canada University Foundation scholarships to teach Irish in Canada (June 2018).

Our MA student Donncha Ó Murchú was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach Irish in University of Montana, USA (June 2018). 

Our School and the UCD School of Law welcomed visiting scholar Professor Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway, for a special lecture on (opens in a new window)Irish legal ideas & Norwegian medieval law (April 2018). 

Our School welcomed visiting scholar Dr Asier Altuna-García de Salazar, Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, for a talk as part of the lecture series (opens in a new window)Irish Studies in a Global Context (April 2018). 

The School cofounded and organised the inaugural Global Irish Diaspora Congress in UCD, with delegates coming from Africa, North America, South America, Asia, Australia/Oceania and Europe. (August 2017) 

The School participated in the UCD Summer High School Programme, offering immersive Irish classes to students from the USA. (July 2017) 

The School received a delegation from Serbia: Professor Ljiljana Markovic and Professor Aleksandra Vranes, Универзитет у Београду. (May 2017) 

The School welcomed visiting scholar Professor Jan Erik Rekdal from Universitetet i Oslo, Norway. (March 2017) 

The School received a delegation from Brittany, France: Professor Gary German and Professor Hélène Tétrel, Université de Bretagne Occidentale (January 2017).