Centre for Irish Studies Seminar: Heroes of the Gaelic World in the Digital Age: The Fionn Folklore Database

Heroes of the Gaelic World in the Digital Age: The Fionn Folklore Database

Dr Pádraig Fhia Ó Mathúna

You are warmly invited to attend an in-person seminar with Dr Pádraig Fhia Ó Mathúna, ‘The Fionn Folklore Database: Irish Myths in the Digital Age’ on Thursday 18 May. The seminar will take place in the Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies, Distillery Road. This seminar is based on Pádraig’s bilingual postdoctoral work with the Fionn Folklore Database Digital Humanities Project, in association with Harvard University and University College Dublin. Full details are available below.

The Fionn Folklore Database (fionnfolklore.org) is a collaborative project between Harvard University and the Irish Government’s Emigrant Support Scheme. The site contains the details of approximately 3,500 orally collected tales, poems, songs and proverbs relating to Fionn mac Cumhaill and the legendary Fianna. In addition to the stories themselves, the site contains a number of educational tools, including glossaries, character lists, digital maps, and summaries, which help to make these legends accessible for a new generation. In this talk, project researcher Pádraig Fhia Ó Mathúna will provide insight into the site’s background and resources, conveying how everyone from researchers to teachers, writers, and the general public can benefit from this innovative digital humanities initiative. 

Dr Pádraig Fhia Ó Mathúna is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Fionn Cycle Folklore Project with Harvard University and University College Dublin,  and a researcher for the ÚRSCÉAL digital humanities project based in the University of Galway.  

A former Fulbright Scholar at the University of Galway, he was a Caspersen Doctoral Fellow at Drew University, and was awarded the Tadhg Foley MA Fellowship from the University of Galway, where he completed his MA in Irish Studies (2013). His book ‘From a Land Beyond the Wave’: Connecticut’s Irish Rebels, 1798-1916 (2017) won the Connecticut League of History Organizations’ Publication Prize (2018). His research focuses primarily on the interactions between Irish-American nationalists, indigenous peoples, and other ethno-political groups in the North American Borderlands and the Caribbean during the mid-nineteenth century. As a Fulbright scholar in the archives at University of Galway, Pádraig conducted research on the writings of nineteenth century Irish emigrant Eoin Ua Cathail, and  published a critical volume of the translated works of Irish language writer Eoin Ua Cathail, entitled Recovering an Irish Voice from the American Frontier: The Prose Writings of Eoin Ua Cathail in 2021.