UCD SPIRe Receive Fáilte Ireland ‘Conference Ambassador Award’

In November, Professor David Farrell was presented with a ‘conference ambassador award’ by Fáilte Ireland for his role as Chair of the Host Committee for the 2024 General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research ((opens in a new window)https://ecpr.eu/).

The ECPR is Europe’s largest political science association and one of the largest political science associations in the world. Its annual General Conference is Europe’s largest gathering of political scientists. The Dublin conference, which took place over four crowded days in the middle of August 2024, attracted 1,904 delegates to the UCD campus, with a further 104 delegates joining the panels online.

The members of the SPIRe host committee were David Farrell (Chair), Caitriona Dowd, Johan Dornschneider-Elkink, Alexander Dukalskis, and a dedicated administrator, Joseph Dillon. Administrative support was provided by the UCD Conference and Events Manager, Fiona Rodgers, and by the Essex-based ECPR Events Team, coordinated by Annie Ho.

As the largest conference ever hosted in UCD, with 40 parallel panels throughout each of the four days of the conference, the conference panels were spread across four buildings on the university campus (Health Sciences, O’Brien Centre, Newman, Sutherland School of Law), with the main conference Reception taking place in the O’Reilly Hall, and two other social events in the University Club.

The conference attracted delegates from 55 different countries, the largest including 347 from Germany, 275 from the United Kingdom, 107 from the Netherlands, 68 from the United States, with other delegates coming from all corners of the globe (e.g. 86 from Asian countries, 25 from Central and South America, 20 from Australia and New Zealand, and five from African countries).  In addition, there were 98 delegates from Irish-based universities.