Future Landscapes a mixed Reality showcase
2019-05-31 17:00 - 21:00 (Europe/Dublin) | The Cornstore, Middle Street, Galway
The exhibition is the result of the 4 week intensive Future Landscapes workshop created in conjunction with the School of Machines, Making and Make-Believe and Galway 2020.
The aim of the workshop was to allow participants to develop the skills to explore the use of immersive technologies, such as Virtual and Augmented Reality, within the context of Landscape, both seen and unseen. This can include, for example, the augmentation of physical landscapes, and creating immersive experiences related to social and political landscapes.
There are a number of staff participating in the workshop who we know would greatly appreciate your support – we look forward to seeing you there!
This capacity-building project is part-funded through a Higher Education Authority (HEA) project on Digital Literacy in Irish Humanities, and through Galway 2020’s Digital Programme.

2019 Sophia Network Meeting
2019-06-01 - 2019-06-02 | Seminar Rooms G010 and G011 Hardiman Reserach Building, Ireland
The Sophia Network Meeting will take place in Galway at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) on the 1st and 2nd of June, and as a bonus, the NUIG invites delegates to a P4C Symposium on the 31st of May. The SOPHIA Network Meeting this year is being co-hosted by Philosophy, NUI Galway Philosophical Dialogue Project – NUI Galway, Little Rainbow Academy Ireland and Curo.
If you would like to join us, please register here
Venue and Location
The 2019 Network meeting will take place in conference rooms at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), University Road, Galway, Ireland.

Preliminary Programme
Friday 31st May: P4C Symposium at NUIG – Academic papers over two sessions. Followed by and Evening Open Public Panel: ‘What is Education for? The Role of Philosophy in Contemporary Ireland’.
Saturday 1st June: Day 1 of Sophia network meeting, workshops and papers (Lunch and refreshments provided). Followed by an optional joint dinner for delegates in the evening (booked by hosts, delegates pay their own meals & drinks) at Massimo Gastro Pub, 10 William Street.
Sunday 2nd June: Day 2 of Sophia Network meeting, workshops and papers (lunch and refreshments provided).
To see the timetable below more clearly, or to download and store it, please click on the picture.

Whitaker PhD Forum 2019
2019-06-06 09:30 - 16:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
The Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change on Thursday, 6th June will host its fourth annual PhD Forum in the Hardiman Research Building at NUI Galway.
The Forum is a one-day event for PhD students, which aims to provide students with a day to interact and network with each other, to gain helpful advice about the PhD process, and to celebrate their research.
The event is suited to students at all stages of their PhD studies. Participants will have an opportunity to meet and interact with other PhD students, to gain advice from PhD supervisors and other University colleagues, to share their PhD experiences, and to get suggestions and ideas to support their research.
This is a full day event. In the morning, PhD students will receive coaching in managing their personal PhD experience. An additional session will feature advice on research careers and preparing a development plan. In the afternoon, there will be a session on PhD regulations and the PhD Viva. There will also be a special session on the introduction to research data management.
The day will also include a poster display of PhD research in the Hardiman Foyer.
The draft agenda for the day is available here.
This is a free event and open to all PhD students. Coffee and lunch will be provided. Students attending will also receive a pack with an updated and extremely helpful Viva guide, as well as other resources.
Registration is essential, as places are limited. Please register here by Thursday 30th May to ensure your place on the day.

Spotlight on Research Lecture Series-'Why Consent? Why Multidiscliplinary? Why Now?: Making the Case for the Active Consent Programme’s Multi-Sectoral Plan for 2019-2023'
2019-06-06 13:00 | Seminar Room G011 the Hardiman Reserach Building, Ireland
Dr Charlotte McIvor (Drama and Theatre Studies), Dr. Pádraig Mac Neela,
Dr Siobhán O’Higgins & Kate Dawson (School of Psychology)

Abstract
This talk theorises the signature approach of the Active Consent programme team comprised of researchers from Psychology, Health Promotion, and Drama and Theatre Studies in relationship to the current policy and educational landscape around sexual health education and assault prevention in Ireland and internationally. Working together since 2014, this team designs evidence-informed tools (based on survey and qualitative data), including workshops and creative arts interventions, which in turn facilitate dialogue regarding consent and sexual health. The team’s embrace of consent as an active, positive educational paradigm – inclusive of all genders, all relationships and all sexualities – is intended to empower young people as active agents in the negotiation of their sexual relationships. Now funded between 2019-2023 by the Lifes2good Foundation with support from the National University of Ireland, Galway, the Active Consent programme has set the objective of unifying third-level, secondary school and sporting organisations’ provision of consent-focused sexual health education. This talk will reflect on the team’s learning since 2014 in partnership with young people, trends in third-level Irish sexual health data that they have observed over this period, and why they believe that a multi-disciplinary approach, which considers interdependent educational and community sectors, is essential for sustainable change in social and personal attitudes towards consent within sexual relationships in a post-#MeToo era. The team will describe the importance of sexual consent as a window on young people’s openness in talking about sensitive topics, and the scope to expand this conversation into mental health and the use of alcohol and drugs.
Dr Pádraig MacNeela leads the SMART Consent project and Active Consent programme. He is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychology, NUI Galway, where he has worked since 2004. He works mainly on youth research, especially in relation to sexual health, mental health, and alcohol use, and on community research projects. He began working on sexual health initiatives following a project with RCNI in 2013 and served on the board of management of Galway Rape Crisis Centre 2014-18. He is co-investigator on the multidisciplinary YOULead doctoral training scheme on youth mental health 2018-2022 and the NUI Galway Resilience Project / Student Information Project – both of which demonstrate the importance of expanding the conversation about sexual health into other areas of well-being in young people’s lives.
Dr Charlotte McIvor is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at NUI Galway in the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance. She is the author of the book Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland: Towards A New Interculturalism, and multiple articles and edited collections focused on contemporary performance, identity, and interculturalism. Other creative projects on sexual consent include an original devised play 100 Shades of Grey co-created with NUI Galway students and co-direction of Lucy’s House Party (with Mick Ruane) for the Manuela Riedo Foundation’s Manuela Programme secondary school education project on sexual consent.
Dr Siobhán O’Higgins is research fellow on the Active and SMART Consent programme, School of Psychology. A sexologist and sexual health promoter, Siobhán has worked, since 1990, developing and evaluating programmes on sexuality and relationships – for third level students, primary and secondary pupils, parents, prisoners and those with intellectual disabilities. Her PhD in 2011, explored secondary school children’s perceptions on what young people need to know and how they would like to be taught about sexuality and relationships and teachers’ ideas on how to meet those needs. The insights and knowledge gained during her PhD were translated into practice in the WISER programme, presently delivered in over 50 schools in the West of Ireland. She developed the SMART Consent workshop and train the trainer programme with Dr MacNeela to raise awareness and challenge existing worrying social norms about how to be a sexually active young person.
Kate Dawson is currently finishing her PhD research in the School of Psychology on Pornography. Since completing her Masters in Health Promotion she has been delivering workshops in schools as a sexuality and relationship educator on the WISER programme and co-created the website for that intervention.

‘The Party’s Splendor Fell to the Floor’: Suicide and Failure in Bowen and Woolf
2019-06-06 16:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
Talk by Moore Visiting Fellow Bridget English
Bio:
Dr. Bridget English is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD in English from Maynooth University in Ireland, where she also lectured. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary Irish literature and culture, with particular research interests in theories of the novel, modernism, and the medical humanities. She is the author of Laying Out the Bones: Death and Dying in the Modern Irish Novel (Syracuse U.P. 2017). Additional publications include book chapters on John McGahern, Anne Enright, and a forthcoming chapter on Irish crime fiction. She is currently working on a book project titled, “Self-Destructive Modernisms: Suicide, Medicine, and Failure in the Modernist Novel.”

Third Galway Conference of Irish Studies 2019 “What is it to dwell?”: Home(s) in Irish Studies
2019-06-07 - 2019-06-08 | G010 and Room 1001,The Bridge Room , The Hardiman Research Building
We are delighted to host the Third Galway Conference of Irish Studies on the theme of home(s) in Irish Studies and extend a warm welcome to the Moore Institute community!
Dr. Sindy Joyce will give our first plenary lecture, ‘Mincéirí Cena: Travellers and Mobile Spaces, Home as a Place, Space and Mobility’, on Friday 7 June at 17.15 in Room G010.
Join us in Charlie Byrne’s on Saturday at 8 June at 18.30 for our second plenary with Melatu Uche Okorie, Oein de Bhairduin & Skein Press.
For our full schedule see: https://gcis2019.wordpress.com.

Summer School In Visual Analytics, 2019
2019-06-10 09:00 - 2019-06-14 17:00 | Insight Centre for Data Analytics, IDA Business Park, Lower Dangan, Galway, Ireland
Organised by the Knowledge Discovery Unit (KDU) at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, the Moore Institute and the Lero Software Research Centre, NUI Galway.
Running from the 10th – 14th of June at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway, Ireland, the KDU Visual Analytics Summer School will provide students, researchers, academics and industry professionals with an opportunity to come together to learn, share experiences and to develop new cross-disciplinary partnerships. Over the course of this 5 day-long summer school participants will:

learn from key researchers in the field,
take part in hands-on sessions to deepen these learnings, and
work together on case-study oriented mini-projects.

The target audiences include postgraduate students and early career researchers in the fields of data analysis, visualisation, digital humanities, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), business and IT. This diverse group of disciplines is important, as it will enable interdisciplinary approaches to both the mini-projects within the workshop, and to future collaborative research projects. We are also keen to include participants drawn from local industry and the civil service, especially those whose role includes data-led decision-making.
Registration & further information
Fees: €250 early bird registration (before May 1st) / €350 regular
Online registration now open at http://vass.datascienceinstitute.ie/registration/
For further information please contact the organisers at vass@insight-centre.org or visit vass.datascienceinstitute.ie

‘Thinking Through the Skin: Touching Northern Irish Short Fiction’
2019-06-12 16:30 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
Talk by Moore Visiting Fellow Caroline Magennis
‘This talk will offer an overview of the depiction of Northern Irish skin in recent short story collections, particularly Bernie McGill’s Sleepwalkers (2013) and
Roisin O’Donnell’s Wild Quiet (2016). Drawing on work by Laura Marks, Abbie Garrington, Virginia Woolf, Sara Ahmed and others, this paper seeks to examine
how we might engage with this new representation of the body and the potential of the haptic to be a mode of both self-knowledge and transmission. In these
short stories, moments of connection through touch are lingered on and memories of touch past are pivotal. White Northern Irish skin is not valorised or
celebrated, but often cast as something fragile and permeable that absorbs the toxic quality of the atmosphere. Scars are everywhere, and language is a fleshy
mechanism involving lips, tongues and teeth. This talk will argue that recent short stories continue to move the Northern Irish body away from its
representational dead end as over-deterministic symbol of the conflict. Rather than just the body in pain, skin is revealed to be a complex medium that yields

Developing Enabling Policies for Digital and Open Teaching and Learning
2019-06-13 10:30 - 15:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
A participatory workshop for all engaged in institutional policy development with respect to digital and open teaching and learning.

This workshop is open to all in Irish higher education, particularly those engaged in institutional policy development with respect to digital and open teaching and learning.
Workshop participants will have the opportunity to review and discuss various digital/open policies and policymaking approaches and consider approaches that are relevant to their own contexts. The workshop will also share policy resources, including the National Forum’s Guide to Developing Enabling Policies for Digital Teaching and Learning. Overall, the focus will be on policymaking approaches that are effective, inclusive and responsive across all aspects: policy elements, core processes and partners, consideration of risks and beneﬁts, policy implementation and review.
The workshop will be facilitated by Dr. Catherine Cronin (Strategic Education Developer, National Forum) and guest speakers will include Dr. Tony Murphy (Head , Quality Enhancement and Innovation in Teaching and Learning, Dublin Business School), Dr. Fiona Chambers (Head, School of Education, University College Cork), Dave Sammon (Professor, Information Systems), and John Cox (University Librarian, National University of Ireland Galway).
To Register please click Here
Workshop programme:
10:30 Arrival and Coffee/tea/fruit/pastries
11:00 Introduction and welcome
11:15 Presentation and discussion: Developing an Open Access policy – John Cox (NUIG)
11:50 Exploration of National Forum guide: Developing enabling policies for digital teaching and learning and related resources – Tony Murphy (DBS) and Catherine Cronin (National Forum)
12:20 Presentation and discussion: Developing a Lecture Recording policy – Tony Murphy (DBS)
13:00 Lunch
13:30 Presentation and discussion: Using design thinking to develop and consolidate university-wide policies – Fiona Chambers and Dave Sammon (UCC)
14:10 Workshop activity: Understanding policy challenges (common and context-specific), marshalling resources and support, charting steps forward, and sharing progress
15:20 Wrap-up and close
This workshop supports the strategic aims of the National Forum in 2019-21 to inform and support the development of national and institutional policies related to teaching and learning in an open digital world. The workshop will build on resources already created by the National Forum, in particular the Guide to Developing Enabling Policies for Digital Teaching and Learning.

Feminist Economics, Irish Finance, and the Commons
2019-06-17 13:30 - 17:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
This workshop, led by Conor McCabe, author of Money (Sireacht): Longings for Another Ireland (2018), will look at writers such as Silvia Federici, Maria Mies, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Nancy Fraser, and Selma James, and the application of their ideas and analysis to an Irish context in terms of combating the new enclosures of financialisation in housing, health, education, transport and energy. It will explore the institutional economic class interests that exist in Ireland, and alternatives to same in the spheres of paid labour and social reproduction.
Capitalism does not willingly pay for the reproduction of the labour it exploits. Social democracy forced it to somewhat contribute to this reproduction through legislation and general taxation, but from the 1970s onwards these very supports have been under profound attack by capitalism, in particular finance capital. The slashing of corporation and capital taxes is the slashing of capital’s contribution to the social reproduction of human labour. Austerity as the new normal is a continuation of this process – one where ‘class struggle includes struggle over social reproduction: for universal health care and free education, for environmental justice and access to clean energy, and for housing and public transportation.
The need for capitalism to enclose social reproduction for profit-seeking purposes makes the issue one that contains the potential for a genuine counter-attack against it. This workshop will explore this potential in terms of activist strategies and organisation.
Cooperation among movements for societal change is nothing new; but the purpose of that cooperation, and its power, appears to have been forgotten. The way capitalism seeks profit and maintains power has an effect on the shape of our resistance to it. The ideas of social movement unionism and feminist economics serve to shine a light on ways of thinking and organisation that will complement the actions by those who wish to transform capitalism.
Dr. Conor McCabe is a research associate with UCD Equality Studies Centre.. He has written extensively on Irish finance and is involved in activist education, working with political, trade union, and community groups.

NUIG Classics book launch-Amrae Coluimb Chille: a critical edition by Jacopo Bisagni
2019-06-18 14:00 - 17:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Jacopo Bisagni, Amrae Coluimb Chille: a critical edition, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Early Irish Text Series, vol. I), Dublin 2019. Pp. xvi + 524. €35
https://books.dias.ie/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9_41&products_id=398
Amrae Coluimb Chille is a complex and fascinating Old Irish text. A unique tour de force of linguistic inventiveness, the Amrae laments the death of Colum Cille and praises equally his monastic perfection and his intellectual achievements, his asceticism and his pastoral leadership, his rejection of the secular world and his descent from a noble lineage.
This book provides the first ever complete critical edition of Amrae Coluimb Chille. The introduction offers a full study of the text’s manuscript transmission, language and style, as well as a discussion of its historical context. The Old Irish text is accompanied by a new English translation and is followed by a detailed commentary, a glossary and several appendices.

IMA 7th World Congress
2019-06-19 - 2019-06-21 | Seminar Room G010, G011 and Room 1001 “The Bridge” in the Hardiman Research Institute
Event Description

Introduction
The 7th World Congress of the International Microsimulation Association will be hosted by the National University of Ireland, Galway from Wednesday, June 19 through Friday, June 21, 2019. We encourage submissions in the fields (broadly defined) of microsimulation, agent based modelling and computational methods.
Plenary Speakers (Proposed):

Herwig Immervoll, OECD
Deborah Schofield, Director of GenIMPACT: Centre for Economic Impacts of Genomic Medicine) at Macquarie University, Sydney
Andreas Peichl, Director of @ifo_Institut’s Center for Macroeconomics & Surveys, Professor of Economics @LMU_Muenchen
Eveline Van Leeuwen, Wageningen University, Netherlands

For registration and more info please click here

Methodology Workshop
2019-06-27 13:30 - 19:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Sibéal Workshop Series & Feminist/Queer Discussion Space NUIG present:
Untangling Methodologies: thinking with feminist and queer methods

Keynote Speaker: Professor Kath Browne, Maynooth University
At this workshop we aim to think through concepts that emerge from feminist and queer research methodologies in order to explore ideas of collaging, layering and mixing practices. Through the imagery of following traces or unraveling the thread (Haraway) that offers the potential to capture the multiple meanings of research sites and provide a more nuanced and careful engagement with method. If methodology is the link between our ontological and epistemological ideas and the method, the doing (Browne and Nash, Queer Methodologies, 2010), then it is no surprise that it becomes a stumbling block when we as researchers are faced with the oftentimes sharp intersection between our ideas and practice. It is not the how of conducting methods, it’s the how of the approach to the methods which we want to explore at this day long workshop.
We invite participants to explore questions around methodologies in the field, the insider/outsider dichotomy, taking notice of ethics and vulnerabilities, storytelling as methodological approach, mixing methods and ideas of power/positions – hoping to gain insights at the intersection between methodology and practice.
This half day workshop invites participants to explore these ideas and others in an inclusive, open setting. We invite paper proposals on methodological approaches which are informed by feminist/queer approaches. We also invite proposals for workshops or practice based presentations.
Please send you proposal to methodologies.NUIG@gmail.com by Friday April 26th 2019.
This event is free of charge but registration is essential, please email us to register. Light refreshments will be provided. We do not have funding for the travel costs of attendees.

Exhibition- Laval Nugent - Warrior and Art Collector
2019-06-27 15:30 - 2019-11-15 00:00 | Foyer the Hardiman Research Building, Ireland
This exhibition developed by the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb and the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia celebrates the life and legacy of Irishman, Count Laval Nugent of Westmeath. Laval Nugent was Irish by birth, a field marshal in the Austrian Army, a negotiator during the Napoleonic Wars, a Croatian national hero and a passionate art collector.
This exhibition is part of a programme of events highlighting the links between the cities of Galway, Ireland and Rijeka, Croatia – both European Capitals of Culture in 2020.

What do we mean when we say we're “adding to the scientific literature”?
2019-07-02 14:00 | Room AMBE 101, Arts Millenium Building, NUIG
Abstract: Every undergrad finds out very fast that one of the most important activities of the faculty is publishing papers. Scientific papers are the coin of the realm in everything from health psychology to high-particle physics. No wonder, considering so much is tied to publication: communicating research results to peers, staking a claim on a discovery or a new approach, building personal or lab prestige, and landing a job or advancing in the tenure track. Supposedly, all the previously listed benefits that flow from publishing are the consequence of social conventions which try to incentivize the core business of scientists i.e. producing reliable knowledge about the world. But where do those conventions come from, why were they established and by whom, and do they serve the intended purpose? In my talk, I
will try to pick apart some of our intuitions about why we publish, and what we hope to achieve with it. My argument will be based on two broad strategies: (1) using historical research on scientific journals and the publishing industry and (2) mobilizing and critically discussing some of the disruptive reform proposals for changing the existing journal/database/search engine systems. The idea is to open up space for a critical and reflexive discussion about what publishing means for scientists and see how to
change it for the better.

Bio: Dr Ivan Flis is a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in South-Eastern Europe at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. He holds a PhD in history and philosophy of science (Utrecht University, Netherlands) and MA and BA in psychology (University of Zagreb, Croatia). His research focuses on the history of research methods in scientific psychology and the philosophical/historical study of the ongoing Open Science reform movement. He has published on the history of 20th century scientific psychology, the replication crisis in psychology, and digital humanities. By working at the intersection of history & philosophy of science with psychology, Ivan hopes to inform and improve psychological
research by insights from the reflexive humanities disciplines critically studying science. In Galway, he’s a visiting fellow at the Moore Institute, working with Dr Chris Noone on topics related to the Open Science reform movement in psychology.

''Contemporary Indian Aesthetics: Decolonizing, Comparative and Cosmopolitan Perspectives'' by Moore Visiting Fellow Kanchana Mahadevan
2019-07-03 18:00 | Tom Duddy Seminar Room, Philosophy Department Morrisroe House, Distillery Road
ABSTRACT: The Kochi Biennale editions since 2012 or India Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019 are ample testimonies to the themes of decolonization, comparative aesthetics and cosmopolitanism in contemporary Indian art practice. Ananda Coomaraswamy and K.C. Bhattacharyya conceptualized these themes in the early twentieth century. Their differences notwithstanding, they argued for the necessity of decolonization in situating the Indian art object in a nationalist context,. However, they also endorsed cosmopolitanism through their critical and comparative re-reading of classical Indian aesthetic tradition with reference to its Western counterpart. Their interventions pose several questions: How does one read Coomaraswamy’s and Bhattacharya’s claims for a phenomenology of the Indian art object? Can indigenous art that emerges through an engagement with a foreign tradition be distinct? How does one negotiate conflicting hermeneutics of tradition? Is the identity of ‘Indian’ art related to cosmopolitanism? This paper will engage with these questions, which continue to be relevant to contemporary Indian art practice.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Kanchana Mahadevan Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai is at present Fellow at the Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway.

Tiomna Nuadh ar Dtighearna agus ar Slanaightheora Josa Criosd
2019-07-12 15:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
John Cox, University Librarian, is pleased to invite you to an event to mark the generous donation to the University of the
Tiomna Nuadh ar Dtighearna agus ar Slanaightheora Josa Criosd
By members of the Ó Dálaigh family,
Athlone, Co. Westmeath.
This was the first translation of the New Testament into Irish and
was created for the Church of Ireland by William Daniel (Uilliam Ó Domhnaill), archbishop of Tuam. Historian, Ruairí Ó hAodha, will speak about the background to the volume.
RSVP (acceptances only): ann.cullinane@nuigalway.ie
T: 091 492540

Glitching the Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Malfunction
2019-07-22 12:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
While the word “glitch” is often still used to connote catastrophic failure, videogamers have come to view glitches opportunistically, as chances to intervene in game texts in ways unforeseen (and often unforeseeable) by their developers.
My presentation draws on a variety of game glitches and the alternate modes of textual navigation they enable to demonstrate how the glitch forces us to rethink even such basic concepts as plot, character, temporality, and point of view, ultimately showing how the resulting “narrative of malfunction” blends and reshapes digital studies, narratology, and queer/disability theory to establish brokenness, error, and failure as baseline states within which narrative “function” is at best temporary and often actively to be avoided. All texts are thus potentially glitched, and much can be learned and accomplished within them by reading for the glitches.

Andrew Ferguson is a visiting assistant professor of digital studies in the Department of English at the University of Maryland. His work—located at the intersection of media-textual studies, cultural theory, and popular culture—may be found in Textual Cultures, Hypermedia Joyce Studies, and Science Fiction Studies among others. His ongoing projects include collections of essays on born-digital horror and “bad” art, a critical biography of the Irish-American science fiction author R.A. Lafferty (soon to appear from the University of Illinois Press), and the manuscript on glitches and narrative theory from which this talk is adapted.

Posthumanist Ecocriticism Postgraduate Summer School
2019-07-23 - 2019-07-24 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
This summer school will investigate methods to communicate complex environmental objects such as climate change, habitation, or the human body as a structurally open spaces inhabited by microscopic life forms in competition or symbiosis with non living objects. In addition, nano processes are being offered as solutions for large-scale geoengineering of the planet for climate mitigation, such as nano-particles to reduce the Earth’s albedo, and the use of nano tech in human enhancement discourses. We will engage with the ideological load of popular narratives, such as right-wing cultures of preparation (i.e. providing a historical perspective of why people build shelters, bunkers and other provisional escape places), religiously motivated discourses of separation or cohabitation with other species (transcorporeality), or the effects of hygiene management on forms of habitation.
Framing environmental objects poses extreme narrative challenges with regard to scale, for example, in the case of large objects such as climate change, its unboundedness, incalculability, and unthinkability, but also, at microscopic level, in the case of thinking the human as a the community of other life forms. In both cases actions are required that exceed the scale in which we are used to operate, at institutional, infrastructural, interpersonal and organisational level.
Part of this ongoing and pressing task is to abstain from imposing worn out labels onto this delicate process of conceiving environmental continuities of texts, beings and ecosystems, which might in an underhanded way continue to inscribe traditional divisions and impositions. Instead, it is calling forth forms of organisation without any precedent.
The recent posthumanist turn in ecocriticism, we believe, must proceed phenomenologically, recognizing the constructedness of divisions within the compound continuum of life on earth, their arbitrariness and the task of this generation as well as future generations to understand the constructedness of these divisions and search for viable alternatives. Constructivisms of all kinds have been and continue to be accompanied by a complementary yearning for authenticity, the real and the material.
In recent years, various strands of theoretical thinking categorised as ecocritical have challenged both the irrefutability and the frustration mentioned above from new perspectives. Taking their cue from innovative literary attempts to imagine, depict and conceptualise the human-nature relationship and the place of human beings in a world under threat, in this summer school we will take issue with the assumed omnipotence of social constructionism. The purpose of this workshop is to ask if there is an alternative to resignation in the face of this perceived inescapability without resorting to a naive insistence on the relevance of ‘the real’. Obviously, an intellectual climate, dominated by suspicion of the very idea of nature outside quotation marks is not conducive to a vigorous engagement with the problem. On the other hand, Timothy Morton in “Ecology without Nature” made a convincing case for why the term “nature” needs to be abolished due to its ideological load as a “respite place” that enables us to tolerate modes of destruction. Acknowledging this, in this workshop we will explore new ways to talk meaningfully about the gap between language and the world.
Some of the areas that will be addressed are:

The world of population and climate crises exceeds the usual operational scales of political action, at the institutional, infrastructural, interpersonal and organisational levels, from the nano to the ‘hyperobject’ (Timothy Morton). Can we use ecocriticism to face the Open, regardless of how and where we live?
What are the sources of ideological inspiration for subcultures that are developing in the face of ecological collapse? What are the cultural and legal-political sources of the belief systems of ‘preppers’ (i.e. people making emergency preparations in the face of climate apocalypse), or of religiously motivated discourses of separation or cohabitation with other species?
The posthuman turn involves ‘rethinking the conceptual frameworks within which we have defined human subjectivity, agency, identity, and self, acknowledging the permeable boundaries of species in the natural-cultural continuum’ (Oppermann 2016, 275).

Programme: Posthumanist Ecocriticism Summerschool 23.-24. July 2019
Day 1: 2pm-4.30pm, Bridge Room Hardiman Building 1001

Community Matters

Ashley Cahillane
Embodying the Water Crisis: Environmental Justice and the Fate of California’s Water in Claire Vaye Watkins’ Gold Fame Citrus

Niamh Donnellan
Dismantling Hegemonic Temporality to Aid Environment Justice

Zania Koppe
Living Differently on the Edges

Roundtable Discussion
Transcorporal Communities: Cohabitation with Other Species on a Warming Planet
(chaired by Tina-Karen Pusse)

Day 2: 10am-1pm, Bridge Room Hardiman Building 1001

Between Utopia and Dystopia: Posthuman Scenarios and Modes of Subjectivity

Daniel Mazurek

Cyberpunk as Postanthropocentric Narrative

Andreas Weidlich
Resurrection from Ruins: Horizon Zero Dawn and the Production of Social Spaces

Simone Klapper
Between Intrusion & Interconnection – The Parasite as a Figure of Interspecific Relational Subjectivity in Contemporary Literature and Film

Maria Quigley
Fungus, Futurity, and the Fall of Humanity in M. R. Carey’s The Girl with all the Gifts

Break
Keynote Presentation: 2pm, Hardiman Building Moore Seminar Room GO10

Heike Schwarz
Disaster Impending Somewhere: EcoGothic, EcoHorror and Posthumanist Ecocriticism.

“Houses of the Nobility and Gentry”: Big Houses of County Galway Heritage Week Photographic Exhibition
2019-08-19 09:00 - 2019-08-24 17:00 | O’Donoghue Center
“Houses of the Nobility and Gentry”: Big Houses of County Galway

Galway Landed Estates from the Archives Heritage Week Seminar
2019-08-24 10:00 - 13:30 | O’Donoghue Theatre
Programme
10AM: Welcome
10.10-11.15: Researchers’ Panel
Olivia Martin: West of Ireland Landed Estates collections as sources for women’s lives
Joe Murphy: The Redington Papers: Insight into a 19th Clarinbridge estate
Ann O’Riordan: Hearnesbrook House & Estate, Killimor
11.15-11.45 Coffee/Tea
11.45-12.30 Landed Estates resources in practice
Geraldine Curtin: Family History in estate archives: the Wilson-Lynch Collection
Martin Curley: The Landed Estates database as an educational tool for primary and second level students
Brigid Clesham: Landed estates collections as evidence for landscape studies, the Plunket estate, Tourmakeady
12.30-13.30 Marie Boran & Brigid Clesham: Landed estates research workshop: Landed Estates database researchers will be on hand to help with queries relating to sourcing material on the history of big houses and landed estates in Ireland.

ADMISSION IS FREE BUT BOOKING ESSENTIAL. See https://www.heritageweek.ie/whats-on/event/galway-estates-from-the-archives for details.

''The New University, Accompaniment, and the Exilic Community''- by Denis O’Hearn
2019-09-04 12:00 | 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)
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