Seminar: ‘Transnational encounters between Irish, Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand universities, 1850s to 1900s: the beginnings of a project’ by Moore Institute Visiting Fellow, Professor Catherine Manathunga

Professor Catherine Manathunga, Victoria University, Melbourne and Moore Institute Fellow

Irish universities such as Trinity College Dublin, the three Queen’s Colleges of Cork, Galway and Belfast and the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin served as key models for the development of early Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand universities.  They also contributed many academics to antipodean universities and featured prominently in the transnational flows of people and academic ideas that have always characterised university life around the globe. This seminar outlines the beginnings of a research project on transnational links between Irish and Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand universities, focusing on the period from the 1850s to the 1900s.  While existing research has been completed on connections between universities in the ‘British world’ (eg. Pietsch, 2013) with a focus on Protestant Anglo-Irish history, less attention has been paid to the history of the role of Irish universities and Irish academics in antipodean universities. This project addresses this gap and draws upon theories about transnationalism and the role of universities and academics as non-state actors contributing to global flows of people, ideas and knowledge.