Library Lunchtime Lecture series which accompanied the exhibition Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century, exploring the varied worlds of five women selected as Honorary Members of the Academy in the nineteenth century.

Location: Academy House
Date: November 2018

Disclaimer:
The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century

In this month’s ARINS podcast, host Rory Montgomery discusses the recent Irish Studies in International Affairs article, A Review of Employment Law in Ireland, North and South, with its authors Esther McGuinness (Ulster University), Desmond Ryan (Trinity College Dublin) and Rory O'Connell(Ulster University).  

The article explores the evolution and current state of employment law across the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, a century after the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. It  examines how partition and constitutional changes have affected shared legal origins and  analyses collective and individual labour law, including health and safety, through the lens of historical and contemporary influences, such as Brexit and the Windsor Framework.  

 

The article is available open access, as are all ARINS publications, and can be read here:  

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/423/article/962917

ARINS Podcast 46: A Review of Employment Law in Ireland, North and South

Listen back to our 2025 Heritage Week lecture by Emma Murphy, curator at the National Museum of Ireland – Natural History. Learn about R. J. Ussher MRIA, 1841-1913, and his connections to the National Museum, including a large collection of archived correspondence from Ussher to the curators and the hundreds of specimen donations that Ussher gave personally, or were given by his associates due to his encouragement.

Richard John Ussher MRIA, 1841-1913, was a speleologist, ornithologist, and renowned Irish naturalist. He published lists of Irish birds, showing the species contained in the National Collection. These, alongside “The Birds of Ireland” (1900), co-authored with Warren, were important works in the history of Irish ornithology. He donated his archive collection to the Royal Irish Academy, and many specimens to the National Museum of Ireland - Natural History.

Emma Murphy, Curator of Terrestrial Zoology at NMI – Natural History gave this lecture, exploring some of the stories, both funny and tragic, that can be found within Ussher’s collections, and highlighting his enduring scientific legacy.

This lecture was part of an programme of events relating to the Ussher Birds Notes collection, held in RIA Library. In 2024, the Library received funding from the Heritage Council as part of the Heritage Stewardship Fund for a project entitled, ‘The Birds of Ireland: Curating the Richard J. Ussher Collection at the Royal Irish Academy’. This project aimed to secure the long-term preservation, access, and discovery of material from the Ussher Bird Notes Collection through a programme of archival cataloguing, digitisation and outreach. The Ussher Bird Notes Digital Archive was launched in May 2025, and included digital images, with accompanying metadata, of 900 selected items from the collection. Detailed cataloguing of over 9000 items from the collection was also completed and researchers can contact library@ria.ie for more information about this listing. 

Thanks to a second tranche of funding from the Heritage Stewardship Fund, granted in 2025, the remainder of the Ussher Bird Notes Collection will be catalogued and more material will be added to the digital archive in due course.

A Naturalist’s Record: Stories from the Collections of R. J. Ussher

In this episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Leo Varadkar.

Leo Varadkar was Taoiseach of Ireland from 2017 to 2020 and from 2022 to 2024. During the thirteen years he spent in cabinet, he held many positions across the Ministries of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Social Protection, and Health.

After stepping down from political life in late 2024, he was appointed as a Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a Board Member of Brussels based Care4Everybody and writes a column for the Sunday Times Ireland.
In this episode he discusses, among other things, national identity, religion, family and his book: Speaking My Mind.

About the Series

My Identity is hosted by Professor Colin Graham, Maynooth. In this series, Colin is in conversation with a range of people whose ideas, work and life experiences shed light on the topic of identity on the Island of Ireland. My Identity is part of the ARINS project. 

Colin Graham is Professor English and formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Maynooth University. His books include Northern Ireland: Thirty Years of Photography, Deconstructing Ireland and Ideologies of Epic. He was editor of The Irish Review from 2004 to 2020. During the Brexit negotiations he created the Twitter account @borderirish and wrote the book I am the Border, so I am, published by HarperCollins.

ARINS: Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South brings together experts to provide evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north and south. The project publishes, facilitates and disseminates research on the challenges and opportunities presented to the island in a post-Brexit context, with the intention of contributing to an informed public discourse. More information can be found at www.arinsproject.com

ARINS is a joint project of The Royal Irish Academy, an all-island body, and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs.
My Identity is hosted by Professor Colin Graham. Podcast management and production by Dr Susie Deedigan.

ARINS My Identity: Episode 6 with Leo Varadkar

The Book of Lecan Conference

During this two-day event in October 2025, speakers explored the production of the Book of Lecan or Leabhar Mór Lecain, its scribes and patrons, and the texts contained within the manuscript.

The manuscript known as the Book of Lecan (Leabhar Mór Lecain) was created in Co. Sligo in the early fifteenth century. It contains a large amount of genealogical material, especially relating to the families with which the scribes were associated, as well as historical, biblical and hagiographical material. Included are a Dindshenchas, Bansenchas, and versions of Lebor Gabála, Uraicept an nÉces, Cóir Anmann, and Book of Rights. The conference papers shared new insights into how the manuscript was produced, its history of ownership and the significance of the various texts found within the compilation.

The event was a collaboration between the Royal Irish Academy, Maynooth University, and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Recordings have some of the lectures have been made available, subject to the presenters’ consent. It is hoped that the proceedings of this conference will be published as part of the Codices Hibernenses Eximii series in due course.

Thursday 2 October 2025
2.00 pm Making the Book of Lecan - Pádraig Ó Macháin
2.45 pm The Later History of the Book of Lecan - Bernadette Cunningham
3.30 pm Coffee break
4.00 pm Poets and Poetry in the Book of Lecan - Elizabeth Boyle
4.45 pm Lebor Bretnach and the International Perspective of the Book of Lecan - Patrick Wadden

Friday 3 October 2025
9.30am A History of the Men of Britain: Text and Context - Alex Woolf
10.15 am Lebor na Cert: a “Grossly Overrated” Text? - Seán Ó Hoireabhárd
11.00 am Coffee break
11.30 am Gilla Íosa Mór: Pseudohistorian - John Carey
12.15 pm Shaping Dindshenchas Érenn: What the Book of Lecan Version Reveals - Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and David McCay
1.00 pm Lunch
2.30pm A Return to Cóir Anmann: its Etymologies, its Date and the Book of Lecan Text - Sharon Arbuthnot
3.15pm The Book of Lecan’s Secular Genealogies (especially those of Connacht) - Nollaig Ó Muraíle
4.00 pm “A Splendid Family Heirloom”:  Manuscript Illumination and the School of Lecan - Karen Ralph



The Later History of the Book of Lecan - Bernadette Cunningham

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Clare O'Halloran, lecturer in History at University College Cork. The first lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century.' 
Until recently, learned societies, which were set up by men for men, have found it difficult to know how to react to the figure of the learned woman.  Should she be ignored or welcomed into their midst?  This lecture looks at some of the ways in which these societies resolved the issue over the course of the period 1800-1950, paying particular attention to the Royal Irish Academy itself.

Location: Academy House
Date: Wednesday 7 November, 2018

Speaker:
Clare O’Halloran is Chair of the Board of Women’s Studies and Lecturer in History in University College Cork.  She did her doctorate on Irish antiquarianism in the eighteenth century and spent many happy hours working on it in the library of the RIA, where she also became interested in the topic of her lecture in this series.

Disclaimer:
The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

‘Learned societies and the problem of women’

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Angela Byrne, DFAT Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. The second lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century'

Princess Dashkova was one of the leading lights of the Enlightenment, a multilingual traveller, writer and early confidante of Catherine the Great. In 1783-94, she directed two Russian academies, and in 1791 was elected honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. This talk will cover her considerable academic achievements, her tumultuous personal life, and her friendship with Cork sisters Martha and Katherine Wilmot.

Location: Academy House
Date: Wednesday 14 November, 2018

Speaker:
Dr Angela Byrne is DFAT Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. She has published and taught histories of migration, travel and exploration, and women in the sciences.

Disclaimer:
The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

‘A Woman in an August Sanctuary': Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, Director of the Russian Academies

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Professor Claire Connolly, Professor of Modern English at University College Cork. The third lecture in our series 'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century.' 
Throughout her life, Maria Edgeworth took an interest in questions of women’s education, always connected in her writing to such issues as political economy, population and nationality. The lecture offers a consideration of Edgeworth's contributions to learning and knowledge in the nineteenth century, bearing in mind the capacities of her impressive novels as well as cultural constraints on her imaginative range.

Location: Academy House
Date: Wednesday 21 November, 2018

Speaker
Claire Connolly is Professor of Modern English at University College Cork in Ireland, a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Her book A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790-1829 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism) won the Donald J. Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Monograph, awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies. She has edited Theorizing Ireland (Palgrave, 2002) and, with Joe Cleary, the Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Scholarly editions include two volumes in The Works of Maria Edgeworth (Pickering and Chatto, 1999-2003) and Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl (Pickering and Chatto, 2000). She has been visiting Associate Professor of Irish Studies and English at Boston College as well as O’Brien Professor at Concordia University in Montreal. With Marjorie Howes (Boston College), she is General Editor of a new six volume series, Irish Literature in Transition, 1700-2015, under contract to Cambridge University Press; as well as editor for Volume 2 of the series, Irish Literature in Transition, 1780-1830. Her current project is a book on Irish Romanticism for Cambridge UP. She is the Parnell Fellow in Irish Studies at Magdalene College Cambridge for 2018-19.

Disclaimer:
The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Maria Edgeworth's Measured Prose

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Marie Bourke, former Keeper-Head of Education at the National Gallery of Ireland. The fourth lecture in our series  'Prodigies of learning: Academy women in the nineteenth century.'
Margaret Stokes was a pioneering figure in Irish antiquarian studies. This lecture explore Stokes as a woman who only reached her potential when she was over fifty, resulting in a creative output in art, art history and archaeology, in addition to her skills as an editor and writer. She was extraordinarily hardworking and singular in her enthusiasm and dedication to Celtic Art. Recognition came to Stokes in the form of honorary membership of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, and the Antiquarian Society of Scotland

Location: Academy House
Date: Wednesday 28 November, 2018

Speaker:
Marie Bourke is an art and cultural historian and former Keeper-Head of Education at the National Gallery of Ireland. Author of The story of Irish museums 1790-200 (Cork University Press, 2011, 2013), she curated the Gallery's recent exhibition, 'Frederic William Burton: for the love of art.' A former Adjunct Professor in University College Dublin, she is currently on the board of the Heritage Council.

Disclaimer:
The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Margaret Stokes (1832-1900): Antiquarian, Artist, Writer – Pioneer

The Royal Irish Academy/Acadamh Ríoga na hEireann is an all-Ireland, independent, academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is the principal learned society in Ireland and has over 420 members who are elected in recognition of their academic achievements.

The Royal Irish Academy, the academy for the sciences and humanities for the whole of Ireland will vigorously promote excellence in scholarship, recognise achievements in learning, direct research programmes and undertake its own research projects, particularly in areas relating to Ireland and its heritage.

‘Learned societies and the problem of women’

The Royal Irish Academy

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