''The New University, Accompaniment, and the Exilic Community''- by Denis O’Hearn
2019-09-04 12:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Recent work by Denis O’Hearn and Andrej Grubacic proposes that “exilic spaces” are a hopeful model for progressive change and, ultimately, for social revolution. Exilic spaces can be defined as those areas of social and economic life in which people attempt to escape from capitalist relations and processes, whether territorially or by attempting to build structures and practices that are autonomous of capitalist accumulation and social control. In this talk, Denis O’Hearn presents a new model for a public university. He discusses how and whether accompaniment, or community engagement, can be the basis for building exilic spaces into the university’s curriculum and practices. He presents real examples from universities in the US and elsewhere.
Denis O’Hearn is a sociologist and community activist who has published widely on the impacts of transnational corporate domination, particularly in Ireland, and also on social movements, prison life, and exilic communities. He has written numerous articles and books, including Inside the Celtic Tiger, The Atlantic Economy, Bobby Sands: Nothing but An Unfinished Song, and Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid. He has won numerous awards, including two Distinguished Book Awards from the American Sociological Association; the Alessandro Tassoni Award, Modena, Italy; and the International Award ‘Citta ‘di Cassino Letterature dal Fronte’. He is now Dean of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso

''Wolfe Tone, Masculinity, Friendship, and Revolutionary Politics in 1790s Ireland''-by Moore Visiting Fellow Ultán Gillen
2019-09-05 16:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
This paper examines the connections between the revolutionary politics of Theobald Wolfe Tone and his friendships, especially that with Thomas Russell, his best friend and closest political ally. It also discusses the centrality of ideas of masculinity to Tone’s politics. In doing so, it seeks to locate Tone and the United Irishmen not just within recent developments in Irish historiography, but also shifts in cultural and intellectual history in the Atlantic world in the age of revolutions. It argues that Tone’s commitment to his friends was central to the development of his politics before his exile from Ireland in 1795, but also in his years of exile before and during the 1798 rebellion, when fear for his friends help Tone radicalise to an extent that has not always been sufficiently appreciated. Tone emerges from the discussion as politically more militant, but also more emblematic of the cultural revolutions of the age.

Postgraduate Medieval Studies Welcome Reception
2019-09-05 16:00 - 18:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Postgraduate Medieval Studies invites all incoming and returning MA, PhD, PostDoc students (along with academic staff at all levels) with an interest in the antique, medieval and early modern worlds to it’s annual Welcome Reception,all welcome, regardless of programme or discipline.

Researching Subcultures and Aesthetics Postgraduate Symposium: Alternative Voices in Academia
2019-09-10 09:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
09:00 – 09:30
Registration / Coffee & Tea
09:30 – 11:00
Panel 1: Aesthetic Manifestations, Expressionisms and Power Structures
Power, Subcultures and Queer Stages in Twentieth-Century Italy and Ireland
Zsuzsanna Balázs, PhD Candidate (Drama and Theatre Studies), NUI Galway
Pondering Progressive Punk Poetry
Jonathan Hannon, PhD Candidate (Sociology and Politics), NUI Galway
Obscene Experimentation: Cultural Refusal and the Experimental Novel in Post-Second World War Britain and France
Andrew Hodgson, Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow (Literature) at Université Paris Est.
Autoethnography and Self-Abjection: 90s queer experimental film and video
Renée Inaiá Steffen, PhD Candidate (Film Studies) Eikones Graduate School University of Basel
11:00 – 11:15
Break
11:15 – 12:45
Panel 2: In Betweenness, Co-operations, Blurring Borders & Mediation
Liminality in Urban and Digital Contexts
Tomas (Jane) McBride, Masters (English), NUI Galway
Co-creation in COLAB’s punk films (New York, 1978-1985)
Céline Murillo, Senior Lecturer at the University of Paris 13 (Sorbonne Paris Cité).
American Independent Cinema & Punk Ethos
Temmuz Süreyya Gürbüz, PhD Candidate (Film Studies), NUI Galway
Punk, Porn, and Politics: Pornographic Provocations in British First-Wave Punk
James F. Anderson, PhD Candidate (Media and Communication), University of Sunderland
12:45 – 13:30
Lunch
13:30 – 14:50
Panel 3: Identity Formations, Signifiers, Popular Culture and Icons
The pen is mightier than the words: New Musical Expression
Kevin Quinn, PhD Candidate, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
The Concept of “Popular Culture” and the Indie Rock scene in Fortaleza, Brazil
Pedro Menezes, PhD Candidate (Sociology), Universidade do Porto
A Punk called Ribas (Documentary, 2019)
Paulo Antunes, Masters (Aesthetics and Artistic Studies – specialization in Cinema & Photography), FCSH – Universidade Nova de Lisboa
14:50 – 15:00
Break
15:00 – 16:20
Panel 4: The Politics of Agency, Resistance in Punk & Forms of Cultural Practices
Political resistance, discourse, and praxis in Bucharest’s punk subculture
Vlad Nicu, PhD Student (Sociology), University of Surrey
Antisocial Justice Warriors: Utilising Punk in the Pursuit of Social Justice
Paul Fields, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader BA Music Business, Buckinghamshire New University
Ocupar e resistir!: disobedience and firmness against the Brazilian state
Lennita Oliveira Ruggi, PhD Candidate (Sociology), NUI Galway
Valéria Floriano Machado, Lecturer (Setor de Educação), Universidade Federal do Paraná
16:20 – 16:30
Break
16:30 – 17:30
The Punk Scholars Network Roundtable Discussion & Closing Remarks
Alternative spaces in academia: negotiating independence, creativity and DIY ethics within academic environment​s

Sport and Film: Examining the relationship from the United States to Ireland (Dr. Seán Crosson, Huston School of Film & Digital Media)
2019-09-10 13:00 - 15:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
This lecture by Dr. Seán Crosson will consider the topic of Sport and Film, drawing on the research he has undertaken of the subject internationally (evident in his monograph Sport and Film (2013)) and in the Irish context (where he will draw in particular on the work he did towards his recent book Gaelic Games on Film: From silent films to Hollywood hurling, horror and the emergence of Irish cinema (Cork University Press, 2019)). In the lecture Dr. Crosson will chart the history of sport cinema and examine the important role the genre has played in the United States in popularising and affirming a key ideology in American life, the American Dream. In the second part of his talk he will move to the Irish context, where Gaelic games have repeatedly provided filmmakers and producers with a resonant motif through which they have represented perceived aspects of Irish identity, perceived as this representation has been neither straightforward nor unproblematic: in international productions in particular, Gaelic games have been employed on occasion as a short hand for regressive stereotypes associated with Irish people, including their alleged propensity for violence. For indigenous producers, on the other hand, Gaelic games afforded distinctive Irish cultural practices and as such were featured to promote and affirm the Irish nation, particularly as an indigenous film culture began to emerge in the aftermath of World War II.

Dr. Seán Crosson is the Leader of the Sport & Exercise Research Group within the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies and Co-Director of the MA Sports Journalism and Communication programme. His research projects include an examination of the representation of sport in film, the subject of a conference and several symposia held in the Huston School over the past seven years, his award-winning monograph, Sport and Film (Routledge, 2013) and his recent book Gaelic Games on Film: From silent films to Hollywood hurling, horror and the emergence of Irish cinema (Cork University Press, 2019). He has also uncovered important depictions of sport in film, in particular of Gaelic games, and his research has been featured in national and international media, including El País, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Business Post, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, the TV channels ITV, and several items on TG4, RTÉ News and Off the Ball. To date he has contributed to ten documentary projects, including a 6-part documentary series on newsreels in Ireland to be broadcast by TG4 in 2018. His research in this area has also resulted in contributions to several major collections, including the award-winning volume The Gaelic Athletic Association 1884-2009 and Screening Irish-America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television. In addition, he has co-edited a special number of the peer-reviewed journal Media History on Sport and the Media in Ireland (Vol. 17, Issue 2). He also did the research towards, and provided the liner notes for GAA Gold – All Ireland Hurling Championship Finals 1948-1959 (Irish Film Institute, 2010) and GAA Football Gold: All-Ireland Final Highlights: 1947-1959 (Irish Film Institute, 2011), DVDs which made available rarely seen footage of hurling and football all-Ireland finals in these years.

Modern Theatre in Russia: Research Methodologies
2019-09-11 17:00 | O’Donoghue Theatre, NUIG, Ireland
A talk given by Dr Stefan Aquilina 2019 Galway University Foundation/Dr Ros Dixon Fellow
Dr Stefan Aquilina is Director of Research and Internationalisation of the School of Performing Arts and Theatre Studies Senior Lecturer at the University of Malta. His research focuses on modern theatre, especially Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, but has wider interest in the transmission of embodied practice, amateur theatre, devised performance, and reflective teaching. Aquilina’s publications include Stanislavsky in the World (coedited with Jonathan Pitches, Bloomsbury), Interdisciplinarity in the Performing Arts (coedited with Malaika Sarco-Thomas, University Malta Press), and numerous essays in journals like Studies in Theatre and Performance, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training; Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre History Studies, and Theatre Studies International. His forthcoming monograph, which comes out in 2020 on Bloomsbury, tackles Russian modernism from the point of view of cultural transmission. Aquilina is also the director of the practice-based project Cultural Transmission of Actor Training Techniques (www.ctatt.org).

Sport and Identity: from local pastimes to global games
2019-09-17 13:00 - 15:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
By Professor Philip Dine, Head of French, NUI Galway.
How does sport shape society? From local origins in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern sports were first nationally and then internationally regulated, enabling novel personal interactions and unprecedented cultural exchanges. This sporting internationalization was to culminate in such global mega-events as the Olympic Games and the football World Cup. These most intensely mediatized spectacles today attract television audiences in their billions, as the apex of modern sport’s complex network of tangible and intangible exchanges. Mobilizing enormous resources based on strategic alliances between national sports industries, international governing bodies and transnational media corporations, they are amongst the modern world’s most powerful producers of locally and globally resonant meanings. In terms of its availability, sport has now achieved near-saturation coverage, certainly within the developed world. Yet, paradoxically, sport’s traditional emphasis on the local has, if anything, been reinforced by the challenges of globalization. This seminar seeks to explore sport’s social significance by offering a case study of France, focusing on the contribution of organized games to the historical construction and continuing reconfiguration of a variety of local, national and, increasingly, transnational identities.

Philip Dine is Personal Professor and Head of French at the National University of Ireland Galway. He has published widely on representations of the French empire, particularly decolonization, in fields ranging from children’s literature to professional sport. Further projects have targeted sport and identity-construction in France and the Francophone world.

“Ghostly Hauntings: Women and Power in Recent Irish Crime Novels“
2019-09-17 16:00 | Hardiman Research Building Room G011, Ireland
Prof. Dr. Patricia Plummer (Duisburg-Essen University, Germany)
Visiting Research Fellow, Moore Institute NUI Galway
Patricia Plummer is Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at Duisburg-Essen University, Germany. Her publications, research and teaching cover an interdisciplinary range of topics, from c18 Orientalism, Victorian literature and Australian culture to contemporary crime fiction, often with a focus on gender issues. Her first monograph was a study of style in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist (2003), and she has co-edited books on women’s studies and feminist crime novels. Current projects include an edited volume on Western interactions with Japan (forthcoming 2020) and a book-length study on the life and works of an Anglo-Australian painter and theosophist. Patricia Plummer is also a principal investigator within the DFG-funded research group “Ambiguity and Difference: Historical and Cultural Dynamics” (2019-2021).
In her talk, Patricia will present preliminary findings from “Detecting Women and Power in the 21st Century,” the research project she is currently working on as a Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellow and in which she focuses on connections between feminism and the crime genre in recent Irish crime fiction. This project is connected to and builds on research on innovations within the crime genre in terms of gender, genre and race that she has carried out over the past years.

NUI Galway History Research Seminar
2019-09-18 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
“We Have The Litany And All To Say”: religion and everyday life in Irish novels of the 1940s’
By Dr. Caitriona Clear (NUI Galway)
‘

Some Old Galway Characters
2019-09-19 17:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building

Cultures of Exclusion in Contemporary Ireland
2019-09-20 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
This panel discussion will bring together Irish Research Council-funded experts to share their findings on homelessness and how the current housing crisis in Ireland intersects with other forms of exclusion and inequality.
Topics may include: direct provision and refugees; racial, gender, and class inequalities in social-housing provision; experiences of statelessness amongst the homeless and migrants; and what’s being done to tackle these interconnected issues and to make Ireland a more inclusive and equitable society, where every resident has adequate accommodation to call home.
Registration for the session is available through Eventbrite.
Panel Speakers
Prof. Daniel Carey is Director of the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies at the National University of Ireland Galway. He is on the board of the Irish Research Council and served as chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance 2014-16. He is on the Council of the Royal Irish Academy. He has written for the Irish Times, RTÉ Brainstorm, THES, and other venues on questions of politics, current affairs, and culture.
Prof. Niamh Hourigan is a Sociologist and Vice-President of Academic Affairs at Mary Immaculate College. She has published widely on a range of themes including inequality and social protest, community violence and inter-generational impact of austerity policy in Ireland. Her monographs including Escaping the Global Village: Media, Language and Protest (Lexington Books, 2003, 2004) and Rule-breakers: Why ‘being there’ trumps ‘being fair’ in Ireland (Gill and Macmillan, 2015). She is a former editor of the Irish Journal of Sociology and former Chair of the Editorial Committee of Cork University Press. She is currently a member of the Board of Dublin Housing Observatory and co-chair of the Limerick Food Partnership which seeks to tackle food poverty in the mid-west region. Having worked as a journalist while completing her PhD, she is a frequent contributor to the Irish media on themes of sociological interest.
Dr Rory Hearne is a Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University. He is an experienced author, researcher, and policy analyst in housing, economic inequality, and human rights. He is author of the book Public Private Partnerships in Ireland, the reports ‘A home or a wealth generator?’ and ‘Investing in the Right to a Home: Housing, HAPs and Hubs’. He also worked as a Senior Policy Analyst with TASC, as a community worker on the regeneration of the Dolphin House social housing community in Dublin’s inner city. He also a hosts a politics and society podcast, ‘Reboot Republic’, and has been involved in housing and social justice campaigns for over 20 years.
Dr Valesca Lima is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Social Science Institute at Maynooth, Ireland. Her research focuses on post-crisis housing policies, social mobilisation for housing rights and governance.
Karen Feeney is Head of Client Services with Galway Simon Community and brings with her over 25 years of progressive experience across the social care sector. Throughout her career, Karen has been dedicated to meeting the needs of marginalised people. Since joining Galway Simon twelve years ago, she has played a key role in the development of services in an increasingly challenging environment. She has been directly responsible for the initiation and development of responsive effective services that have made a significant contribution to Homelessness Prevention. Karen has a proven record collaborating with a range of service providers, to identify and deliver innovative solutions to resolve the housing and support needs of clients with complex needs. Karen holds an MA in Community Development, a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a qualification in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.

Sport & Exercise Research Group Lecture: A Case Study in Sports Journalism- Antoine Blondin, L’Équipe and the Tour de France
2019-09-24 13:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
A product of the early twentieth century’s ‘sport-media-industry complex’, cycling’s Tour de France has engendered novel forms and styles of newspaper coverage and has attracted the interest of a variety of writers.A prominent right-wing novelist in the early fifties, Antoine Blondin (1921-1991) was a guest follower for French sports daily L’Équipe on four stages of the 1954 Tour. The highly original and stylishly composed “chroniques” he delivered warranted an invitation to the following year’s race as the featured “Writer on the Tour”, a literature-infused column he would make his own until 1982. This unique legacy, nostalgically and at times frivolously celebrating the myth of a largely invented tradition, has been captured in a posthumously compiled corpus of all 524 chronicles published in 2001, representing something of a memory site in its own right. Situated in the context of broader discussions relating to journalism, sport and society, this seminar will explore how one of the Tour de France’s most significant followers reads and interpret its story while drawing, in an inimitable tone and style, on the resources of the French literary canon.
Ruadhán Cooke teaches French in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Research interests include the overlaps between sport and literature, sports journalism and the cultural impact of sport.

German at NUI Galway presents Reinhard Kuhnert READING / LESUNG aus seinem Roman: In fremder Nähe
2019-09-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building

IRC Postgraduate Scholarship Scheme Information Session
2019-09-25 13:00 - 14:00 | Seminar Room GO10, Ground Floor, Hardiman Research Building
The Moore Institute will host an information session on the IRC Postgraduate Scholarship Scheme on Wednesday, September 25 @ 1:00pm in Room G010 Ground Floor, Hardiman Research Building.
The session will be facilitated by Prof. Dan Carey, Director of the Moore Institute.
In addition to the information session, the Moore Institute will offer a reading service for applicants, the timeline for which is as follows:

Deadline for receipt of near final draft applications, fully copyedited and with full input from supervisors to be submitted by October 11, 2019 to mooreinstitute@nuigalway.ie. Drafts need to be in Word format in order to track changes and include comments.
Applications to be returned to applicants by October 24, 2019. This will give the applicants one week to incorporate the feedback received into their final draft, for submission to the IRC on October 31, 2019.

Full details on the scheme is available here.

‘Rhodes and the Holocaust: Intergenerational transmission of memory and experiences’
2019-09-25 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Milena Cosentino (University of Limerick)
As part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20

Eastern European and Slavic Poetry Reading Circle
2019-09-25 16:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
Не надо людям с людьми на земле бороться.
People on this earth don’t have to fight with each other.
Marina Tsvetaeva: from ‘I know the truth’ (1915)
Facilitated by Emily Tock, MLIS, MALP, Government of Ireland Post-graduate Scholar PhD student in the Discipline of English
As this is a potluck format, attendees are encouraged to bring their own favourite Eastern European and Slavic verse to share in this informal roundtable.

European Cultural Identity Workshop at NUI Galway
2019-09-27 10:30 - 17:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
NUI Galway will host an Irish Research Council Funded Creative Connections Initiative, examining questions of European identity through a focus on the themes of sport and digital media.
The workshop will draw on a range of disciplines in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences (AHSS) and STEM areas from NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin, and Queen’s University, Belfast to examine the topic of European cultural identity. Additional strands in the network will examine the themes of schooling and curriculum design, and landscape as key components of Europe’s shared cultural heritage and identity. These strands will be used as a prism through which participants will explore European cultural identity, its construction and current crisis.
NUI Galway partner in this initiative, Dr Seán Crosson of the University’s Huston School of Film & Digital Media and leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group, said: “Sport annually engages millions of diverse people across Europe, both as participants and spectators. Participants engage in sport in a wide variety of competitive, educational, recreational and, increasingly, health-related contexts, while spectators attend sporting events or follow them via the mass media. Widespread engagement with sport, accelerated by considerable technological and digital media advancements, means that sporting practices and representations contribute significantly to the social construction of cultural identities. In its various forms, sport offers a unique opportunity to encourage an appreciation among citizens of their shared cultural heritage and common values at the heart of European identity.”
Workshop two will facilitate an interdisciplinary examination of the interconnection of sport and digital media and their roles in constructions of European cultural identity, bringing together researchers in film, digital media, sport and leisure studies, French studies, psychology, media and communication studies, and medicine.
The keynote speaker at the workshop will be Professor Alan Tomlinson, Professor in Leisure Studies, University of Brighton. A leading contributor in the area of sport and media studies, Professor Tomlinson’s work includes Sport and the Transformation of Modern Europe: States, media and markets 1950-2010 and The Sport Studies Reader. Professor Tomlinson’s lecture ‘Sport, Digital Media and European Cultural Identities’ will explore where and how sport contributes to or problematises conceptions of European cultural identity, with examples from the mass media and new/digital media forms.
A full schedule for the day long workshop is available at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/research/European-Culture-project.php7

Archive Screening of a play "Lady G" Written by Carolyn Swift (1987)
2019-09-27 13:00 | Coole Park, Gort, Ireland
****This Event venue has been changed to Coole Park****

Introduced by Barry Houlihan, as part of the Lady Gregory-Yeats Autumn Gathering. Programme details and schedule is here: https://autumngathering.com/about/

"The family of Clanrickard Burkes and the writing of aristocratic history in eighteenth-century Ireland"
2019-09-27 20:00 | Claregalway Castle, Galway
The Annual De Burgo Lecture
will be given by distinguished historian
Professor Nicholas Canny
Fáilte roimh chách – All welcome, admission free
Nicholas Canny, FBA, has been a publishing scholar on the history of Ireland, particularly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and on Atlantic History ever since his first learned article appeared in 1970. He was an Established Professor of History at NUI Galway, 1979-2009; President of the Royal Irish Academy, 2008-2011; and Member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council, 2011-2016. His major book is Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (Oxford, 2001), and he is currently completing Imagining Ireland’s Pasts: Early Modern Ireland through the Centuries scheduled for publication in late 2020, also by Oxford University Press

Sport & Exercise Research Group Lecture:Bringing Stats into Play
2019-10-01 13:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
By Professor John Newell
Professor John Newell is Head of Statistics in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics, NUI Galway. His primary areas of research in Biostatistics are in the theory and application of statistical methods in clinical trials of health service and population health interventions and in the development of novel analytic approaches in Sports and Exercise Science.
Through his role as funded Principal Investigator in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, his team of researchers help sports scientists in elite sporting organisations make sense of their data in order to improve training response, accelerate recovery and optimise performance. In this talk he will give a short history of the use of Statistics in elite sport, the role Biostatistics plays in athlete welfare and the use and misuse of big data in elite sports.

Keepers of the Gael Caomhnóirí na nGael
2019-10-01 18:00 | Galway City Museum

Introduction to Citations Metrics and Its Role in Identifying Suitable Publication Outlets
2019-10-02 13:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
The College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies, in conjunction with the Moore Institute, will be hosting a series or support and information workshops for staff in the coming semester. The first workshop (on Wednesday October 2nd at 1pm) will consider the topic of citation metrics and its role in identifying suitable publication outlets. All sessions will be held in Room G010, Ground Floor Hardiman Research Building.
This session, to be led by Hardy Schwamm (Open Scholarship Librarian, James Hardiman Library), will provide an introduction to citation metrics. We will look at author and journal metrics and see how they can help with identifying suitable publication outilets. We will also discuss limitations of metrics and their responsible use. We will focus on the tools Scopus and Google Scholar. A useful overview of academic impact and research metrics can be found on this PDF.
Hardy Schwamm is the new Open Scholarship Librarian in NUI Galway’s James Hardiman Library who will get involved in different aspects of “Openness” such as Open Access, Open Data and Responsible Metrics. Hardy has previously worked as Research & Scholarly Communications Manager at Lancaster University in the UK where one of his responsibilities was to understand and develop the institutional citations performance.
Our subsequent workshop will be held on Wednesday November 6th at 12pm and will consider the topic of Preparing Major Funding Applications

Exchange rates and prices in Ireland, 1698-1826
2019-10-02 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Daniel Cassidy and Dr. Aidan Kane (NUI Galway)
As part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20

Do Witches Have Human Rights?
2019-10-04 14:00 | MY333, Aras Moyola
**postponed until further notice **
By Thomas Strong
A remarkable shift has occured in how we talk about witchcraft and sorcery. Whereas these topics have long occasioned critical reflection on belief and reason, or cultural difference and human universals, the new discourse describes witchcraft as a “human rights” problem and focuses on harms associated with it. This shift reflects the influence of a number of actors in both national and international settings, actors working with institutions of global governance to pressure national states to develop coherent legislative and social responses to witchcraft violence. In September 2017, the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner convened its first ever expert workshop on witchcraft and human rights in Geneva. A year later, the UN curated an exhibit of photographs about witchcraft directly outside the The Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room in the Palais des Nations where the expert panel had convened. This paper presents an interpretation of this small exhibit and its imagery, highlighting the ways in which its representational sensibility symbolises the shift I have described: from ‘belief’ to ‘harm’ as the dominant topos shaping the intelligibility of witchcraft as a social phenomenon. When articulated in the context of human rights discourse, “witchcraft” requires not so much understanding, as witnessing. Thus, I examine the ways in which the photographs not only construct ‘victims,’ but also ‘witnesses.’ They depict bodies that ‘testify’ to their own suffering and survival, imagery which provokes a sense of moral responsibility in those who see it. Drawing on fieldwork in highland Papua New Guinea, I also reflect on what the photographs can’t show: witchcraft itself. I describe some of the moral and epistemological challenges of representing and responding to witchcraft phenomena, returning to the aporia contained within this question: Do witches have human rights?
Thomas Strong – Department of Anthropology – Maynooth University
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/thomas-strong

Gaeltacht.net
2019-10-07 15:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
An bhfuil Gaeilge agat? Beidh Seisiún Eolais maidir leis an tionscadal taighde Gaeltacht.net ar siúl ar 3pm i seomra G010 Dé Luain, 7 Deireadh Fómhair.
There will be a Launch and Information Session regarding the educational research project Gaeltacht.net at 3pm in Room G010 on Monday, October 7th. Come along to learn more about this month-long course of daily language tasks designed to support overseas Irish language learners, and find out how you could participate – bígí linn!

Master your PhD, Tools and Strategies to achieve your PhD in the fastest and most effective way possible
2019-10-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Seminar Room G010
A workshop with Dr Alexander O’Hara Oxford University Press author and Visiting Fellow, Moore Institute
To register please click here

Creative Coding Meet-up
2019-10-09 15:00 - 16:00 | IT303, IT Building, NUI Galway, Ireland
This semester we’re going to run a weekly session for those interested in learning “creative coding”. This approach is a good way for those without any coding experience to develop a foundation in programming. The sessions will use online resources (see below) to guide self-directed learning.

Creative coding is a different discipline than programming systems. The goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional. Interaction design, information visualization and generative art are all different types of creative coding – which has become a household term describing artworks articulated as code. (via Awesome Creative Coding )

What can I expect?

This is a peer support group, not an instructor-led workshop / class.
It’s an opportunity to schedule some time each week to develop your coding skills, and to get some help, if you need it.
There are a collection of tutorial videos (bring headphones), online courses and reference material linked to in the “Further Details” section below, for you to work through at your own pace.

If you have no coding experience, and aren’t sure where or how to start, someone will help you.
Come along, meet people who are also learning to code, and get help if you run into any problems. Showing what you’re working on would be great too.
Further details
You can find further details, and learning resources, at: https://github.com/dh-nuigalway/Creative-Coding-Meetup. The sessions run on Wednesday from 3pm – 4pm, in IT 303, IT Building, NUI Galway.
Any questions?: Contact David Kelly (david.d.kelly@nuigalway.ie)

Thinking the Empire Whole
2019-10-09 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Prof. Steve Pincus (University of Chicago)
As part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20
Prof. Pincus describes himself as “a historian of Britain and its Empire, of comparative revolutions, comparative empires, and of northern Europe more broadly” and works mainly on the early modern period. His monographs include a comparative study of England and the Dutch Republic, England’s Glorious Revolution, and the American Declaration of Independence. He is currently working on a global history of the British Empire and a comparison of the Irish Revolution of 1782 and the American Revolution. For more details, see https://history.uchicago.edu/directory/steven-pincus
His paper on Wednesday is called “Thinking the Empire Whole”. It makes a case for getting beyond the teleologies of national and proto-national historiographies so as to capture both the dynamics of empire making and the trajectories of colonial resistance.

Book Club
2019-10-09 17:00 - 18:00 | Common Room 2nd Floor, Hardiman Research Building
First Meeting will take place October 9th
If you are interested in signing up please or looking for more information please email Laoighseach – laoighseach.nichoistealbha@oegaillimh.ie

The Early Modern Poetry Book as an Expressive Form
2019-10-10 11:00 | Hardiman Research Building Room G011, Ireland
Book Launch by Dr. Erin McCarthy (University of Newcastle, Australia)
Dr. Erin McCarthy (formerly of the Moore Institute, where she worked as postdoc with the RECIRC project for four years, and currently Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Newcastle, Australia) is returning to give a talk based on her imminent book: Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry and the Reading Public in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press)
