Lillis Ó Laoire

Lillis Ó Laoire is personal professor of Irish Folklore and Literature in Roinn na Gaeilge, NUI Galway. His award-winning research includes Literature and particularly poetry but he is most usually known as an authority on Gaelic song performance. His ethnographic book On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean (Scarecrow 2005) on Tory Island song is regarded as a pioneering work. His research on Joe Heaney gained him a senior IRC Fellowship in 2009-10, resulting in Joe Heaney: Irish Song Man (Oxford 2011), co-written with Sean Williams. This work received the Alan P. Merriam prize for best monograph from the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2012. He has published some 70 papers on various aspects of Irish Literature and song. His performance practice forms an integral part of his research and has gained him the Corn Uí Riada prize for sean-nós singing, twice (1991 and ’94). He was named the recipient of the traditional singer of the year award in 2020 by TG4.