Sport & Exercise Research Group: Exercise Physiology in evaluation of fitness and exercise prescription
2019-10-22 13:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
By Dr. Ananya Gupta
Seminar topic: Exercise Physiology in evaluation of fitness and exercise prescription. In this seminar Dr. Ananya Gupta will talk about the benefits of physical activity (PA), the evidence supporting PA and the recommended guidelines for PA in a healthy adult. In addition she will also discuss the importance of exercise physiology and how it can be applied in exercise testing in the evaluation of health, fitness and performance. We will also briefly discuss the basic principles underlying exercise prescription in healthy clients as well as in a clinical setting.
Dr. Ananya Gupta is a lecturer in the Discipline of Physiology. She is the Director of the MSc program in Exercise Physiology and Application in Therapy. She is also the founder and director of the Exercise Physiology Core Facility (EPCF) located in the Human Biology Building which is an integral part of the Discipline of Physiology, School of Medicine, NUI Galway. The Facility is committed to a tripartite mission in which to advance the knowledge and practice of exercise physiology through supporting and advancing exercise physiology research, providing professional training and mentorship to the next generation of exercise physiologists and to increase awareness about the importance of physical activity and physical fitness in lifelong health amongst the general population. Dr. Gupta’s research focuses on the application of exercise interventions in improving health and fitness in sports and in a clinical setting. Some ongoing projects in the lab include-
Exercise as Therapy and its Application in Cancer rehabilitation
Exercise interventions and physiologic monitoring in improving training and sports performance
Monitoring hematocrit levels as a predictor of sports performance
Management of Chemotherapy induced neutropenia in cancer patients

The Kei Uta Collective
2019-10-22 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Professor Huhana Smith, Massey University, New Zealand as part of Irish Studies’ Seminar Series
You are invited to attend the second seminar of our Irish Studies’ Seminar Series, which is run in association with Carbon Cultures hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway this month.
This seminar will take place at 4pm, Tuesday 22 October at Room G010, Moore Institute, Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway.
We are delighted this month to welcome the artist, scholar and curator Professor Huhana Smith to the Centre for Irish Studies, as part of an Irish Research Council New Foundations award in collaboration with Professor Karen E. Till and the Space&Place Research Collective, Department of Geography, Maynooth University. This is a follow up seminar to our Carbon Cultures Interdisciplinary Seminar we hosted earlier this year where Dr Cathy Fitzgerald was in conversation with Dr Iain Biggs on eco-social futures, and all that attended that seminar would be most welcome to attend on this occasion as well.
Huhana will be discussing her ongoing work with the Kei Uta Collective in New Zealand. This is a transdisciplinary research team that has worked together since 2014 to determine necessary adaptation toolkits and transition action plans that aim to mitigate uncontrollable climate change, its unpredictability, and prepare communities in the short term for their long term protection. The Kei Uta Collective has created unique and compelling collaborations where culture, science, design and contemporary art privilege Māori ideas of ecological and cultural sustainability, and which are location-specific to Kuku, Horowhenua, Te Ika a Maui/North Island, New Zealand.
Professor Huhana Smith is a visual artist, curator and principle investigator in research who engages in major environmental, trans-disciplinary, kaupapa Māori and action-research projects. She is co-principle investigator for research that includes mātauranga Māori methods with sciences to actively address climate change concerns for coastal Māori lands in Horowhenua-Kāpiti. Huhana actively encourages the use of art and design’s visual systems combined in exhibitions, to expand how solutions might integrate complex issues and make solutions more accessible for local communities.
We are also delighted to welcome eco-social artist Laura Donkers (University of Dundee) as our session discussant on Tuesday. Laura will explore some of the key issues that Huhana will be addressing in her lecture, and examine it in relation to her own work and experience in the Outer Hebrides and Scottish visual and ecological cultures more widely.
We would like to acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council, Centre for Irish Studies NUI Galway, Dept. of Geography Maynooth University, School of Art Massey University, and the Research Support Scheme, CASSCS, NUI Galway, in co-hosting our seminar this month.
As usual, do spread the word as beidh fáilte roimh chách!
Le gach dea-ghuí,

Creative Coding Meet-up
2019-10-23 15:00 - 16:00, 2019-10-30 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)

Fluxes, Fevers and Fighting Men: Lessons Learned
2019-10-23 16:00 | Seminar Room G011 the Hardiman Reserach Building, Ireland
By Dr. Pádraig Lenihan (NUI Galway)
As part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20
Dr. Pádraig Lenihan of the History Department will give a lecture on the experience of writing his most recent book, Fluxes, Fevers and Fighting Men: War and Disease in Ancien Regime Europe, 1648-1789. An expert in military and medical history, Dr. Lenihan is the author of four other books, including The Last Cavalier Richard Talbot (2014) and Consolidating Conquest: Ireland 1603-1730 (2007).

Performance and the Archive: Presence, Absence, and Digital Memory
2019-10-24 10:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
This symposium will address current research, practice and developments in the field of digital theatre historiography, archival curation, and memory and performance studies. The digital interface between the archive of past performance and the present is enabling new encounters between presence and absence, as well as navigating and contesting the recognised documented repertoire. The digital future of the archive presents challenges in terms of documentation of contemporary theatre practice. Processes generated and experienced through virtual and augmented reality, digital video installation and other technologically-enabled performance, effects our collective memory. The reanimated archive of aural and visual media, the corporal record of movement and space, as well as the essence and affect of live reception, present an ever-more interdisciplinary engagement with the digital and born-digital archive of performance. The symposium will discuss and question the future presence and possible absence from digital theatre archives, how we encounter and experience exhibitions and display of such records, as well as the documentation and curation of future digital performance.

The event will also include a launch of the new book: Navigating Ireland’s Theatre Archive: Theory, Practice, Performance (Peter Lang Press, 2019) edited by Dr. Barry Houlihan and launched by Catriona Crowe.

To register and for more info please click here

Wisdom after Metaphysics?
2019-10-24 17:00 | Hardiman Research Building Room G011, Ireland
By Professor Markus Wörner
Abstract
The paper begins with a common-sense approach to the notion of wisdom, drawing on results of Positive Psychology. Wisdom is to be understood as a mode of being in the world based on sapiential competence informed by a general attitude of openness to (practical and theoretical) truth rather than on specialized capacities of an intellectual, moral or religious elite. It is within the competence of Homo sapiens as such. Its acquisition results in a trustworthy and adequate co-ordination of cognitive, emotional and characterological habits (intellectual and ethical virtues) which are suited to confront fundamental, existential questions concerning human reality. Wisdom comes in degrees and may increase with experience.
Biographical Note:
Markus H. Wörner is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and former Head of Department at the National University of Ireland, Galway (1986–2009). After his Lektorat in theology at the Dominican Studium Generale in Germany in 1973 and postgraduate studies in Oxford as DAAD student he completed his studies in philosophy and theology at the University of Bonn with the degree of Dr. phil. (1975). He taught fundamental theology and medieval philosophy at the Free University of Berlin (FU) while finishing his Habilitation in Philosophy (1985). He has taught as Visiting Professor at Boston College (1990) and FU Berlin (2000). His major book publications are Performative und Sprachliches Handeln (1978), Das Ethische in der Rhetorik des Aristoteles (1990), Glückendes Leben (2000), Verstehen an der Grenze (2003), and Thomas von Aquin, Summa Contra Gentiles IV (1996). He also edited four Latin/German editions of the complete Summa Contra Gentiles. His recent research focuses on rhetorical argumentation and wisdom. He is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Book Launch: Navigating Ireland's Theatre Archive:Theory, Practice, Performance
2019-10-24 17:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Barry Houlihan
The book will be launched by Catriona Crowe, historian and archivist and former Director of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland. The event will take place here at the Hardiman Building – Moore Institute Seminar Room (G010) 5.30pm. Please feel free to join us for a glass of wine on the evening. All welcome!
There is also a symposium taking place for the day in advance of the launch, beginning at 10am: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/performance-and-the-archive-presence-absence-and-digital-memory-tickets-70036299457

IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship - Information Session
2019-10-29 12:30 - 13:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
The Moore Institute will host an information session on the IRC Postdoctoral Scheme, the closing date for which is on November 27, 2019.
The session will be chaired by Prof. Daniel Carey, Director of the Moore Institute. Full details on the scheme can be found here.
Reading Service
The Moore Institute will also provide a reading service for applicants for this scheme, the timeline of which is as follows:
– Notice of project title to be sent to mooreinstitute@nuigalway.ie by Monday, November 4.
– Near final draft of application, fully copy edited and with full input from the mentor to be submitted to mooreinstitute@nuigalway.ie by Friday, November 8.
Reviewed applications will be returned to applicants on or before Wednesday, November 20, 2018.

Sport & Exercise Research Group Lecture: Psychology and Performance in Sport
2019-10-29 13:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Dr Jane Walsh
Seminar topic: Psychology and Performance in Sport: The Key Characteristics and Strategies used by Elite Athletes. In this seminar Dr. Jane Walsh will look at the evidence from Sports Psychology to provide insight into the key characteristics and mental strategies used by top performers in sport. Jane will draw on recent sporting examples to illustrate how characteristics such as mental toughness and emotional stability are key factors in success and provide examples of how strategies such as goal setting and control of effort have to been used by athletes to break world records. Dr. Walsh will provide an answer the question on everyone’s mind….’Can we learn these strategies for peak performance?’ You will have to turn up to find out these answers and more about the key to success in sport (and life!).
Dr. Jane Walsh is a lecturer in Health Psychology in NUI Galway. Her research is underpinned by the theme ‘Health Behaviour for Healthy Ageing’. She is the Director of the mHealth Research Group and recently secured grants in excess of €8 million euro in EU funding to conduct research on how novel technologies can be harnessed to deliver personalized evidence-based interventions to promote healthy ageing. Jane is the Co-Leader of the Health and Wellbeing Cluster in the Whitaker Institute, a member of the Irish Cancer Society Research Advisory Board and an Associate Editor of the Journal Psychology and Health. Jane has given several keynotes both nationally and internationally on related topics including: The Physical and Psychological Benefits of Exercise and Mindset and Peak Performance in Sport. Jane is a keen triathlete and has won medals in track and field, cross country running, open water swim races and triathlons.

Potluck Eastern European and Slavic Poetry Reading Circle
2019-10-30 13:00 - 14:30 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
Slava Raškaj (1877-1906) Waterlily (1899)

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.

Prospecting and bioprospecting on Russia's cotton frontier: Commodities and empire in tsarist Central Asia
2019-10-30 16:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Dr. Jennifer Keating (UCD) as part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20
Recently appointed to a post at University College Dublin, Jennifer Keating is a historian of imperial Russia specialising in environmental history. She is currently completing a book manuscript that examines the role of environmental change in colonial policy, practice and resistance on Russia’s southern frontier in modern-day Central Asia from 1881 to 1916, via the region’s eco-systems, forests, fields, deserts, minerals and water sources. She is co-editor of Empty Spaces: Perspectives on emptiness in modern history (2019), a volume that explores the construction and use of tropes of emptiness in histories of land, sea and air in the modern world.

Launch of Mobility in the Russian, Central and East European Past (2019)
2019-10-30 17:15 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Professor Dan Carey will launch this new volume of essays edited by Dr. Róisín Healy of the History Department. A reception will follow.
This edited collection reveals the enormous diversity of journeys taken into, out of and around modern Russia and central and eastern Europe by means of twelve case studies. These range from the flight of serfs from Russia to Poland-Lithuania on foot in the eighteenth century to adventure tourists from Britain exploring Russia on motor-bikes since the turn of the new millennium. Taken together, the essays challenge Orientalist stereotypes of the region as characterised by stasis and emphasise that travel was by no means limited to elites, but experienced by ordinary people, including peasants, women and those living in peripheral locations. https://www.routledge.com/Mobility-in-the-Russian-Central-and-East-European-Past-1st-Edition/Healy/p/book/9781138354524

The reception of Hopkins by Modernist writers
2019-10-31 13:00 | Seminar Room G011 the Hardiman Reserach Building, Ireland
By Brian Arkins (retired Professor, Classics, NUI Galway.)
Abstract:
This paper analyses the reception of Hopkins by Eliot, Yeats, Stevens, Pound and Joyce.

Spotlight on Research Lecture Series: From “great” to violent: on contemporary art
2019-10-31 17:00 | Seminar Room G011 the Hardiman Reserach Building, Ireland
By Professor Paolo Bartoloni (Established Professor of Italian Studies)
Abstract
How is art measured today, and is it possible to speak of contemporary art as “great”? At the turn of the millennium many believed that art was simply commercially driven or its opposite, ephemeral. Postmodernism has often been blamed for the demise of “greatness” in art and the fading away of art’s enigma and complexity. And yet the postmodern bubble is supposed to have burst years ago, as far back as 2005, some believe (Perniola, 2015). So, what are we left with? Nothing reassuring and comfortably recognizable it seems, certainly not a name or another “ism”. Where are we, and what kind of parameters can be used to relate to contemporary art? In fact, does contemporary art still matter? It appears so since it is now “the subject of global events, tabloid coverage and mass attendance” (Mirzoeff, 2009). Art has blasted its way into the public sphere, and has become “liable to be received as a provocation to or an act of violence” (Mitchell, 1994). Has art turned from “great” to violent, yet violent to whom and for what purpose?
By looking at a series of curatorial practices in the city of Florence, this talk will rehearse some of these questions, focusing on the way in which local identity might be challenged and even violated by the assemblage of disparate art forms that bring about what the visual studies expert Nicholas Mirzoeff calls “neoculturation” (2009).
Paolo Bartoloni is Established Professor of Italian at the National University of Ireland, Galway. In May 2019 he has been elected to the Royal Irish Academy. Previously he taught in Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Sydney where he was Founding Director of the program in International and Comparative Literary Studies.
He has published extensively on continental theory and philosophy, especially the works of Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and Mario Perniola, and their impact on the reception of authors such as Blanchot, Calvino, Caproni, and Svevo. He is currently working on the interface between the Italian Renaissance and contemporary art, especially in the context of the city of Florence. He is the author of over 60 single-authored articles in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals and of four monographs: Objects in Italian Life and Culture: Fiction, Migration, and Artificiality (Palgrave, 2016); Sapere di scrivere. Svevo e gli ordigni di La coscienza di Zeno (Il Carrubo, 2015); On the Cultures of Exile, Translation and Writing (Purdue UP, 2008); Interstitial Writing: Calvino, Caproni, Sereni and Svevo (Troubador Publishing, 2003). He has also co-edited several volumes including the thematic issue Ambiguity in Culture and Literature (CLCWeb, Purdue UP, 2010).

A Bun in the Oven: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization
2019-11-01 14:30 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
By Barbara Katz Rothman, Professor of Sociology, CUNY in association with Gender Arc at NUI Galway
Barbara Katz Rothman, PhD, is Professor of Sociology, Public Health, Disability Studies and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she also runs the Food Studies concentration. This talk focuses on her book, A Bun in the Oven (2016), the first comparison of the birth and food social movements in the USA. In both movements, issues of the natural, the authentic, and the importance of ‘meaningful’ and ‘personal’ experiences get balanced against discussions of what is sensible, convenient and safe. And both movements operate in a context of commercial and corporate interests,which places profit and efficiency above individual experiences and outcomes. A Bun in the Oven brings new insight into the relationship between our most intimate, personal experiences,the industries that control them, and the social movements that resist the industrialization of life and seek to birth change.
With thanks to the Moore Institute and the Fulbright intercountry speaker scheme
ALL WELCOME!

Research Support Seminar on Preparing Major Funding Applications
2019-11-06 12:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
As part of its Academic Research Support Services initiative, the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies, in association with the Moore Institute, is hosting a series of research support and information seminars for staff this semester.
The second workshop in this series will consider the topic of Preparing Major Funding Applications.
The session will feature three speakers: Professor Nicholas Canny (Professor Emeritus, History (NUI Galway) and previously Member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council, 2011-2016), Professor Marie-Louise Coolahan (Professor of English) and Professor Gary Donohoe (Professor of Psychology), both of whom have significant experience of European funding opportunities.
The session will be chaired by Professor Dan Carey (Moore Institute) and each speaker will provide a short overview of their own experience before the session will be opened to the floor for questions.
Nicholas Canny, FBA, was Professor of History, 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 also for Oxford University Press.
Marie-Louise Coolahan is a Professor of English specialising in early modern literature at NUI Galway. She is the author of Women, Writing, and Language in Early Modern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2010), as well as articles and essays about Renaissance manuscript culture, women’s writing, early modern identity, and textual transmission. Marie-Louise is currently Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project, RECIRC: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700 (www.recirc.nuigalway.ie). She co-edited, with Gillian Wright, Katherine Philips: Form, Reception, and Literary Contexts (Routledge, 2018) and her special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, ‘The Cultural Dynamics of Reception’ will be out in January 2020.
Prof. Gary Donohoe is a clinical psychologist, Professor of Psychology at NUI Galway, and Director of the Center for Neuroimaging and Cognitive Genomics (NICOG). Gary’s research focuses primarily on understanding and addressing those aspects of disability in psychosis related to cognitive deficits. In 2016 he obtained a European Research Council fellowship for his work on immune aspects of cognitive function in schizophrenia (The iRELATE program). In 2018, together with colleagues from NUI Galway, UCD, and RCSI, he received funding for a HRB Collaborative Doctoral Program in Youth Mental Health Research (the YOULEAD program). Gary has been a reviewer for multiple grant funding agencies, including the EU’s Marie Curie fellowship awards.
The Panel Chair, Professor Dan Carey, is Director of the Moore Institute, a board member of the Irish Research Council, is on the Council of the RIA and is the Irish representative on the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) board. Dan also served as chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance (2014-16).

Teaching history in a divided society: the tyranny of myth
2019-11-06 16:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
By Dr. William P. Kelly (University of Ulster)
As part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20

The Travels of St Colman 'the Pilgrim
2019-11-06 18:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Guest Lecture by distinguished scholar Ian Fisher, FSA (London), FSAScot:
St Colmán, the 7th-century Irishman who founded a church on Inishbofin and another at Mayo, is best-known from the account of him in Bede’s History of the English Church. While living in Northumbria, Colmán became embroiled in the Easter Controversy, after which he retreated to Ireland, bringing Irish and Saxon monks with him. His and their legacy in Ireland and Britain is the subject of this talk by distinguished scholar Ian Fisher, FSA (London), FSAScot, author of many works on the architecture, archaeology and history of early medieval Scotland and Ireland.

The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles
2019-11-07 17:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
Book launch By Maggie Scull
The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968-98 (Oxford University Press, 2019) provides an indispensable study of the role played by the Catholic Church during one of the most tumultuous periods of British and Irish history – the Northern Ireland Troubles – showing evidence which offers a radical new perspective on religious institutions as conflict mediators in the twentieth century.
Dr Niall Ó Dochartaigh will offer commentary on the book, followed by a few words from the author Dr Maggie Scull. Refreshments will be provided.
Dr Maggie Scull is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at NUI Galway.

Film Screening and Q&A with historian and co-producer Bríona Nic Dhiarmada
2019-11-08 10:30 | CA 107, Aras Cairnes, NUI Galway
‘Mairéad Farrell — An Unfinished Conversation’ is a documentary from Loopline Film which investigates the life and death of Mairéad Farrell. In 1988, the SAS shot dead Farrell and two other unarmed members of the IRA in Gibraltar. Due to her youth, her gender, and her stature within the IRA, Farrell was quickly subsumed into the pantheon of Irish republican martyrs. To the British, she was a terrorist. To her family, she was a victim of Irish history. Martina Durac directed this documentary.
The screening will conclude with a Q&A with historian Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, a co-producer of the film. The documentary film is based on the personal relationship Nic Dhiarmada had with Farrell. The two met several times and talked about Farrell’s life journey from the middle-class upbringing in Belfast to her rise as an iconic IRA figure once imprisoned then gunned down at age 31. At the time of Farrell’s death in 1988, Nic Dhiarmada had been working on a book about her.
All are welcome!
This event is being held in tandem with a witness seminar on conflict related funerals later in the day at the Moore Institute.
This film screening is co-funded by the Moore Institute at NUIG and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

To register please click here

'Virtuosity, Mediocrity and Creative Education' by Dr. Ian Munday (NUI Galway)
2019-11-11 15:00 - 16:00 | Tom Duddy Seminar Room, Philosophy Department Morrisroe House, Distillery Road
About the Speaker
Dr. Ian Munday is Senior Lecturer in Educational Philosophy in the School of Education at NUI Galway. Ian’s research activities testify to an engagement with philosophical issues in education, particularly those concerned with teaching and learning. His publications have tended to focus on various approaches to performatives and performativities and demonstrate the significance of these ideas for education. The themes explored in these terms include race, gender, authority and the language of schooling. Here, philosophical ideas are treated in regard to their relevance to the details of educational practice. Ian has also written on the themes of creativity and problem-solving. Ian is currently Convenor of Network 13 Philosophy of Education at ECER and Convenor of the Irish branch of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.
Abstract
The popular understanding of creativity within the study of education tends to include the notion that everybody is creative and that one can draw a distinction between little “c” (or “common”) and big “C” (or “high”) creativity. Here “Creativity” talk resonates with other popular discourses around inclusion and well-being – creativity should no longer be the domain of the talented few, and being creative can make us feel better. The commonly assumed connection between creativity and the arts is sublimed as the former is pictured as both ubiquitous and germane to all forms of activity. The view of creativity outlined above tends to be presented as “progressive” and vital for social and economic survival in the 21st century. “Conservative” opposition to it can be found in the work of the philosopher Roger Scruton who stresses the value of creative genius, and the importance of being exposed to it, in the face of what he sees as an increasingly degraded culture. In this paper I try and show ways in which the oppositions created by this disagreement deconstruct. Drawing on Nietzsche’s discussion of “untimeliness” I argue that the popular conception of creativity is only progressive in the most limited sense and contributes to conserving a nihilistic social imaginary in regard to the future. I then consider ways in which virtuosity is not without its virtues when it comes to social progress and that dulling its flame paves the way for an enforced mediocrity that maintains the status quo. Finally, I introduce Dewey and Derrida to the discussion to consider the possibility that though creativity is in certain senses ubiquitous this need not take the anodyne form presented in the literature on education that makes this case.
Venue: Tom Duddy seminar room, Philosophy Building, Morrisroe House, 19 Distillery Road
All Welcome!

Nikola Tesla: The Rise and Fall of a Technological Hero
2019-11-13 16:00 | Room 1001, the Bridge, Hardiman Research Building
By Prof. Bernie Carlson (University of Virginia)
As part of NUI Galway History Research Seminar Series Semester 1, 2019-20.
The final session of the History Research Seminar this semester, next Wednesday, 13 November, features Prof. Bernie Carlson from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Carlson is a historian of technology based in the Faculty of Engineering, where he uses the careers of inventors and entrepreneurs to educate future engineers. He is the author of three monographs, including one on Nikola Tesla, which has been published in nine languages. He will be drawing on this biography for his paper entitled: “Nikola Tesla: The Rise and Fall of a Technological Hero”.
Please note that the seminar meets in The Bridge, Room 1001, First Floor, Hardiman Research Building. We will return to our usual venue of G010 after Christmas.

‘The Clonbrock Photographic Collection and Lady Clonbrock (1839-1928): Contemporary Contexts and Public Activism' by Úna Kavanagh
2019-11-14 16:00 - 17:00 | Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies, Distillery Road
The Centre for Irish Studies invites you to attend the final seminar of our Irish Studies’ Seminar Series by Úna Kavanagh, PhD Scholar at the Centre for Irish Studies, will speak on her current research, ‘The Clonbrock Photographic Collection and Lady Clonbrock (1839-1928): Contemporary Contexts and Public Activism’. The seminar will take place at 4pm, Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies.
Úna Kavanagh’s doctoral research, ‘Empire, Science and Gender: The Life and Work of Lady Clonbrock, August Dillon née Crofton’, critically explores the life and work of Lady Clonbrock, Augusta Dillon née Crofton (1839-1928) through images from the Clonbrock Photographic Collection (CPC) currently housed at the National Library of Ireland.
Her work investigates Augusta Dillon, Anglo-Irish woman of the ‘Big House’ at the Clonbrock Estate in East Galway. Dillon was a woman who made significant contributions to society over her extensive lifetime, including public and private endeavours dedicated to family, religion, politics and the people of Connaught. This research will foreground Dillon’s scientific endeavours and her public life as a nineteenth-century Victorian woman of Ireland and Britain. Úna’s study of Augusta Dillon will strengthen, critique and challenge previous representations of this forgotten Anglo-Irish figure. It will be the first substantial critical study of Dillon’s life, work and legacy as framed through considerations of empire, science and gender.
Previous research in the area focused predominantly on the key area of photography. It illustrated the seminal contribution of Augusta Dillon to the Clonbrock Photograph Collection (CPC) and her role as a scientific pioneer through it in the late-Victorian, early-Edwardian era, upholding the British Empire while residing in the West of Ireland.
At the seminar next Thursday Úna will demonstrate how, through photographic images, the Dillon family used their home and its surroundings to promote the family as being progressive, modern, intellectually and scientifically inquisitive, and as benevolent landlords. Augusta’s wide-ranging public engagement will also be discussed with a particular focus on her duties with the Mountbellew Poor Law Union and Mountbellew Rural Disrict Council. Úna will be presenting on this portion of the seminar at the Galway Great Reads Festival, “Pumps, piers & potholes… 120 years of Local Government” at the Raheen Woods Hotel, Athenry on Saturday 16 November 2019.
Originally from Kerry, Úna Kavanagh has lived in Cork, London and Houston, Texas before returning to Galway in 2010. She is currently a PhD candidate engaged in a scholarly biographical study of Augusta Dillon, Lady Clonbrock (1839-1928) working with Dr Nessa Cronin at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway. She completed a BA Connect with Irish Studies at NUI Galway in 2017, and received an Irish Studies’ Fellowship to attend the Yeats’ Summer School as part of her BA studies in 2014. Úna was awarded an MA Humanities’ Scholarship in 2017, and in 2018 she undertook her MA in History at NUI Galway where she was won the P. J. Mara Scholarship award. Her MA Dissertation focused on how anti-Treaty internees articulated versions of masculinities and their ideologies through contributions to an autograph book from those interned in Tintown Camp No. 2 at the Curragh during 1923.

Photos attached: 2019 Galway’s Great Read Festival: Úna Kavanagh thrilled to meet Ms Mary Glynn (née Egan) who worked in Clonbrock House in the 1940s, at a talk on the Estate’s photo collection at Ballinasloe Library, bringing Irish photographic and landscape history alive!

'From Ethics to Ontology to the Anthropocene' by Dr. Nora Ward
2019-11-18 15:00 - 16:30 | Tom Duddy Seminar Room, Philosophy Department Morrisroe House, Distillery Road
Dr. Nora Ward (NUI, Galway) will present a paper. ‘From Ethics to Ontology to the Anthropocene’, as part of the seminar series of the Values and Identities research group on Monday 18th November.
About the speaker
Nora Ward is a lecturer in the philosophy department. She received her BA and MA from NUIG, and completed her Ph.D. in the University of North Texas. Her research is on environmental ethics, with a particular focus on environmental identity, ecofeminism and ecomodernism. She is also interested in public philosophy and the role and place of philosophical work outside the academy.
Abstract
Christian Diehm writes that “the increasingly arcane debates about environmental ethics are, at base, debates about ontology.”1 The implication that the field of environmental ethics may be more appropriately understood as environmental ontology has a long history in environmental philosophy, with many thinkers stressing the primacy of ontology over ethics and asserting that a productive environmental ethic can only emerge as a direct consequence of a radically new conception of subjectivity. Yet, practical questions as to how a new ethic can emerge from a new ontology remain largely unanswered. In this talk, I look at the role of story as intermediary between ethics and ontology within environmental philosophy, with specific reference to the work of Irish philosopher, John Moriarty. I argue that Moriarty’s work uses particular narratives as a way to ground and contextualise subjectivity in its relation to place, serving as a possible point of connection between modes of being and modes of action. Finally, I briefly explore whether the Anthropocene is another possible example of such a grounding narrative, analysing, in particular, the role of ontological insecurity in orienting towards ethical action.
Bio:
https://mooreinstitute.ie/research-group/values-identities/
ALL WELCOME

'The Irish Leviathan and Late Norse Paganism' by Prof. Mikael Males, University of Oslo
2019-11-19 13:00 - 17:00 | The River Room, AS203, Arts/Science Building
Mikael Males is Associate Professor at the Dept of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, and PI of the project Myths about Language in the Middle Ages.
Publications include Etymology and Wordplay in Medieval Literature (ed.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019)
The Poetic Genesis of Old Icelandic Literature (Berlin: De Gruyter, in press for 2020)
Event hosted by Classics and Celtic Civilisation.
All welcome.

'Prosimetrical sagas in Irish and Norse: the background of the form' by Prof. Mikael Males, University of Oslo
2019-11-20 17:00 | The River Room, AS203, Arts/Science Building

The Rory Kavanagh Bursary Presentation
2019-11-21 17:00 | Seminar Room G010, Hardiman Research Building
The Rory Kavanagh Bursary Presentation is an event showcasing the Erasmus experience in Italy by students of Italian at NUIG, the opportunity to celebrate the memory of Rory Kavanagh and his passion for Italian life, language and culture, and the generosity of Mary and Des Kavanagh, whose endowment to the University has made it possible to award the Rory Kavanagh Bursary every year since 1998.
This year’s presentation will be introduced by The Bursar, Ms. Sharon Bailey, and will focus on the experience of Peter Magliocco, the recipient of the Rory Kavanagh Bursary 2018.
Photo taken at least year’s presentation : from left to right, The Registrar, Professor Pól O’ Dochartaigh, Des Kavanagh, Éilis Gillespie (winner of the Rory Kavanagh Bursary 2017), Mary Kavanagh, Professor Paolo Bartoloni (Head of Italian).

Symposium on Hispanic Crime Narrative
2019-11-22 10:00 - 14:00 | Hardiman Research Building Room G011, Ireland
Including a keynote by Dr Stewart King (Monash, Australia) on ‘Spanish Crime Fiction in and beyond Spanish Studies, this symposium brings together specialists from Ireland who approach ‘Hispanic’ crime fiction from a range of different perspectives: Dr David Conlon (Maynooth) takes a comparative look at Borges and Twin Peaks: The Return; Dr Marieke Krajenbrink (UL) examines the German-authored ‘Barcelona Krimi’; Dr Diana Battaglia (UCD) discusses the work of Cuban Leonardo Padura Fuentes in the context of societal crisis; and Dr Kate Quinn (NUIG) re-assesses Ramón Díaz Eterovic’s ‘Heredia series’ in light of current events in Chile.
Photos: Book cover and photo from a left-wing bookshop in Chile.
Schedule:
10:00-11:00
Dr David Conlon (Maynooth) ‘Detection and Ontological Crisis in Jorge Luis Borges and Twin Peaks: The Return’.
Dr Marieke Krajenbrink (UL) ‘The Barcelona-Krimi. Representations of Spain in recent German crime fiction’.
11:00-12:00 Keynote by Dr Stewart King (Monash) ‘Spanish crime fiction in and beyond Spanish Studies’.
12:00-12:30 Coffee
12:30-13:30
Dr Diana Battaglia (UCD) ‘Narratives of crisis and resistance: Leonardo Padura’s Cuban Noir’.
Dr Kate Quinn (NUIG) ‘Ramón Díaz Eterovic’s Heredia Series as disillusioned chronicle of the Chilean transition to democracy’.
13:30-14:00
Round-table discussion.
This event is supported by an Athena Swann Research Capacity Building grant awarded by the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies and sponsored by the office of the VP for Equality and Diversity, and hosted by the Moore Institute.
Organiser: Dr Kate Quinn, Spanish and Latin American Studies

Web maps, data visualisation, and mapping with Neatline
2019-11-26 10:00 - 13:00 | The Moore Institute Seminar Room G010 Ground floor The Hardiman Research Building, Ireland
This session will introduce some key aspects of visualising your research data using web-based maps.
You will have the opportunity to get hands-on and follow along with a demonstration of how to create your own simple web-based map using an online service and an institutional version of Omeka/Neatline. There will also be a short overview of using JavaScript to create maps based on Open Source technology, for publication on the web.
Registration
Please register to attend via Eventbrite
Learning Objectives
After the workshop, participants should:

Know when and why to should use web-based maps for data visualisation;
Understand the conceptual and technological components of a web-based map;
Be able to use an online service to present data on a map of their own

Workshop facilitators and speakers
David Kelly is Digital Humanities Manager for the Moore Institute at NUI Galway. He works with individual researchers and research project teams engaged in DH projects. To date, this has included projects involving database development, text and data visualisation, social annotation, digital edition development and network analysis.
Cillian Joy works in the NUI Galway Library on Digital Publishing and Innovation. His primary focus is the digital library strategy and programme of work to enable digital scholarship. Key areas for Cillian are project management, solutions to deliver new digital initiatives, integration, and interoperability. Cillian has a primary degree in Experimental Physics and a Masters in Information Systems and Computer Science. In the past Cillian worked as a Project Manager, Principal Technical Specialist, and for Web development and hosting companies.

Are you a Digital Scholar?
Developing skills with digital technologies can be a challenge for researchers interested in digital and open scholarship.
To help, the Library, in partnership with the Moore Institute, presents a series of informal workshops to share practice-based expertise, know-how, and experience in technologies and methods, that will enhance your experience of newer forms of scholarship.
The series:

26 November 2019 – Web maps, data visualisation, and mapping with Neatline. David Kelly and Cillian Joy. G010, Hardiman building, 10:00-13:00
17 December 2019 – Managing digital collections. Objects, metadata, ingestion, and access. Aisling Keane. G010, Hardiman building, 10:00-13:00
14 January 2020 – Scanathon. Crowd-sourced digitisation. Aisling Keane. G011, Hardiman building, 10:00-13:00
18 February 2020 – Online and digital identity for scholars. Blaneth McSharry & Grainne McGrath. G010, Hardiman building, 10:00-13:00
10 March 2020 – Video production for scholars. Eileen Kennedy. G010, Hardiman building, 10:00-13:00
14 April 2020 – Working with images in Python for research. Cillian Joy. G010, Hardiman building, 10:00-13:00
