The Asylum Workshop: a performers perspective is the fourth in the Grangegorman Histories podcast series exploring the histories of the Grangegorman area of north, inner-city Dublin.

Evie O’Brien is an actor and performer. As a drama student at the Grangegorman campus of TU Dublin. Evie played a central role in the Asylum Workshop play, a documentary-drama written by playwright Colin Murphy, directed by Peter McDermott and performed by final year TU Dublin students in June 2023, supported by Grangegorman Histories.
In this short podcast, Evie shares her experience of how engaging with the play shaped her understanding of the history of the Grangegorman site as a one of the first TU Dublin students to move on to the site. She reflects on how mental health has been viewed in Ireland in the past, and how the physical buildings on Grangegorman serves as a reminder of the importance of dismantling the stigma that surrounds mental health in the future. 


The Asylum Workshop: a performers perspective

In the fifth episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Claire Mitchell. 

Claire Mitchell is a writer and researcher from Belfast. She writes about people and everyday politics in Northern/Ireland, using interviews, memoir, archives and storytelling.  Her latest book, The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798, was published in 2022. Clare was formerly a senior lecturer in Sociology at Queen’s University Belfast and holds a BA, PhD & post-doc in Politics from University College Dublin. In this episode, she discusses her identity and her work. 

This is episode 5 of the My Identity podcast series 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.

This is episode 5 of the My Identity podcast series 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 (University of Notre Dame). Audio design and editing by Conor Patterson and Morgan Blain-Crehan, The Spinner’s Mill, Belfast.

ARINS My Identity: Episode 5 with Claire Mitchell

As part of Biodiversity Week 2025, Dr Carla Mateus delivered a lunchtime lecture in the Royal Irish Academy on the topic of historical meteorological records held in the Academy Library's archive collections. 

Historical meteorological observations are crucial to better assess past climate variability and trends and the frequency, intensity, duration, and distribution of extreme weather events, and to put the current climate change into historical context. The records preserved in the archives of the Royal Irish Academy date from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and are of cultural and scientific importance. Many of the records were sent to the Academy by diligent observers interested in science and the arts, others were collated in response to an Academy initiative to organise a system of meteorological observations in Ireland in the period 1850-52.

This lecture highlights the role of the Royal Irish Academy as a curator of historical meteorological records across the Island of Ireland, as a publisher of diverse papers on instrumentation and meteorological observations, and as a learned body which encouraged a standardised approach for reliable weather recording.

The meteorological records include observations of air temperature, maximum and minimum air temperatures, wet bulb, sea temperature, rainfall, pressure, wind direction and force, cloud cover and weather remarks. Many well-known historical extreme weather events are covered by instrumental observations and documentary weather remarks, such as storms and air temperature extremes.

Historical early meteorological observations from Ireland in the archives of the RIA (1783-1854)

This is episode 45 of a podcast series that provides evidence-based research and analysis on the most significant questions of policy and public debate facing the island of Ireland, north and south. 

Host Rory Montgomery, MRIA, talks to authors of articles on topics such as cross border health co-operation; the need to regulate social media in referendums, education, cultural affairs and constitutional questions and the imperative for good data and the need to carry out impartial research. 

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.

ARINS podcast 45: European Perceptions of Scottish Independence Before and After Brexit

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

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.

The Asylum Workshop: a performers perspective

The Royal Irish Academy

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