Fellow In Focus 2022-23

Fellow in Focus Lunchtime Discussions

Recorded February 27, 2023.

An 'in conversation' event featuring Visiting Research Fellow Dr Susan Manly (University of St Andrews) in conversation with Prof Aileen Douglas (Professor of English, TCD) and organized by Trinity Long Room Hub.

Susan Manly is a Reader in English at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research interests are in Romantic-period Irish and English literature. She is an expert on the work of Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849), the best-selling Irish contemporary of Jane Austen, and has produced scholarly editions of a wide range of Edgeworth's writings. She is currently completing a political biography of Edgeworth. This will be the first account of Edgeworth's life to appear in the last 45 years. It will provide a new assessment of Edgeworth's intellectual and political life, looking at her milieux, correspondences, allegiances, interventions, and influence. Edgeworth's sustained engagements with debates about Ireland, about slavery and about women will form a major part of the story told in this biography. In 2019, Susan made a radio documentary about Edgeworth, ‘A Radical Life’ which aired on RTÉ Lyric FM in May 2019 and re-aired in May 2020. You can hear it here. As part of Susan’s research for her new political biography of Maria Edgeworth, she has been looking at Edgeworth’s attitude towards West Indian and especially Jamaican slavery in the early nineteenth century. Edgeworth’s fictions and plays often figured emancipated African and Creole characters: for instance, her celebrated novel, Belinda (1801) – originally entitled Abroad and At Home – features two such characters. The extent and nature of Edgeworth’s personal knowledge of and implication with the West Indies, however, has never been fully established before.

Educated in Ireland and America, Aileen Douglas holds a PhD from Princeton University. She began her academic career in the States, teaching at Washington University in St. Louis for five years before returning to Trinity to take up a position in the School of English. Her research interests focus on the writing of the long eighteenth century. In her monographs, 'Work in Hand: Print, Script, and Writing, 1690-1820' (OUP 2017) and 'Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body' (Chicago 1996) she explores aspects of embodiment, materiality, and literary representation. She also has a particular interest in Irish writing and writing by women. Aileen Douglas is a General Editor of the IRC-supported Early Irish Fiction 1690-1820 series (Four Courts, 2011-) and has co-edited two volumes for the series. Her co-edition of Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield for the Cambridge Collected Works of Goldsmith is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2024.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

TLRH | Fellow in Focus with Dr Susan Manly (University of St Andrews)

A lunchtime 'in conversation' event on April 4th, 2023, featuring Rooney Writer Fellow Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe in conversation with Dr Sean Hewitt (School of English, TCD), organized by Trinity Long Room Hub.

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Auguries of a Minor God, her first collection, was published by Faber & Faber in 2021. A finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and the Butler Literary Award, it was chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, National Poetry Day Recommendation, Shakespeare & Co. Year of Reading Selection, and a Book of the Year by both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent.

Seán Hewitt is a poet, writer and literary critic. Before joining Trinity, he held postdoctoral positions at University College Cork and at TCD, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Irish Research Council, respectively. His teaching and research interests are mainly focused on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and Irish literature. He also has an ongoing interest in the environmental humanities, and in studies of literature and science.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

TLRH | Fellow in Focus with Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe(Rooney Writer Fellow)

A lunchtime 'in conversation' event on March 28th, 2023, featuring Visiting Research Fellow Prof Dariusz Komorowski (University of Wroclaw) in conversation with Prof Jürgen Barkhoff (School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, TCD). 

Dariusz Komorowski is a Professor of German Philology at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. Since 2005 he has been the Head of the Research Centre for German-Swiss Literature and since 2017 the co-originator and editor-in-chief of the online magazine “CH-Studien. Zeitschrift zu Literatur und Kultur aus der Schweiz” which he leads in cooperation with Anna Fattori (Rome) and Jan Jambor (Prešov). From 2012 to 2018 he was the Head of the postgraduate studies in “Cultural Management in the Cooperation of Regions of the European Union" at the University of Wroclaw. Dariusz Komorowski has conducted seminars and given lectures at the universities in Göttingen, Zurich and Maribor and organised several international seminars for master students in cooperation with those universities.

Jürgen Barkhoff is Professor of German (1776) and Head of Discipline in Germanic Studies. Before he was Vice-Provost/Chief Academic Officer and Deputy President of Trinity College Dublin. He teaches German literature and German and European Cultural History from 1750 to the present. His main research areas are literature and medicine, science and psychology around 1800, questions of identity in the German-speaking world and contemporary Swiss literature.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

TLRH | Fellow in Focus with Prof Dariusz Komorowski(University of Wroclaw).

Recorded April 20, 2023.

A lunchtime discussion featuring Professor Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape) in conversation with Professor Eve Patten (Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub). Professor Lalu will discuss his new book ‘Undoing Apartheid’, which he worked on while a visiting fellow at the Hub in 2019.

Premesh Lalu is the former Director of the DSI-NRF Flagship on Critical Thought in African Humanities of the Centre for Humanities Research. Following an MA from the University of the Western Cape, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Doctoral Fellowship to read towards a doctorate in History at the University of Minnesota. In 2003 he successfully defended a doctoral dissertation titled “In the Event of History”. After sixteen years in the Department of History as an Associate Professor, Lalu was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to convene a fellowship programme on the Study of the Humanities in Africa. He was promoted to full professor upon being appointed as Director of the Centre for Humanities Research in 2008.

Eve Patten is Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin. A scholar in nineteenth and twentieth-century Irish and British literature and cultural history, she is editor of the volume of essays, Irish Literature in Transition, 1940-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and author of a monograph on representations of Ireland’s revolutionary decade in English writing, Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2022). She is also co-PI on the Ireland’s Border Culture project, funded by the HEA Shared Island programme.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

TLRH | Fellow in Focus with Prof Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape)

Recorded April 25, 2023.

A lunchtime 'in conversation' event featuring Visiting Research Fellow Dr Roisín Higgins (Teesside University) in conversation with Dr Mark Hennessy (School of Natural Sciences, TCD), organised by the Long Room Hub.

Roisín Higgins is an Associate Professor at Teesside University with a research focus on historical memory. Her book on the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising, Transforming 1916: Meaning, Memory and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Easter Rising (Cork, 2012), won the ACIS James Donnelly Sr Prize for History and Social Science. Roisín was involved in many aspects of the Centenary of the Easter Rising, including acting as historical consultant on the ‘Commemoration’ zone of the permanent exhibition GPO: Witness History. Her wide-ranging public-facing work also includes the popular RTÉ programme National Treasures.

Roisín’s current work explores sensory experiences of living through the recent conflict in Northern Ireland. In 2021-2, she received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for her project ‘Sensing the Troubles: A Critical Re-Imaging of Life in Northern Ireland’. She is currently the recipient of an AHRC Networking Grant for ‘Towards a Socio-Somatic History of the Troubles’, which brings together scholars, arts practitioners and community organisers to explore the impact of society on the body.

While at the Hub, Roisin will be collaborating with scholars whose work reframes stories of post-war Ireland, under the ‘Making Ireland’ theme. Through her project, ‘Fragments of Conflict: A Sensory History of the Troubles, she will explore new methodologies for writing histories of Ireland.


Mark Hennessy is Assistant Professor in Geography and Convenor of Trinity’s Making Ireland research theme. He holds a B.A.(Hons.) and Ph.D. from the Department of Geography, University College Dublin. In 1984/'85 he was a Research Fellow in the Flinders University of South Australia. He was a Research Assistant in the Departments of Geography and the Medieval History in 1985-1987 and Lecturer in Geography in UCD from 1987-1991. Hennessy then became a Lecturer in Geography in Trinity, before taking up his appointment as Assistant Professor in Geography.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

TLRH | Fellow in Focus with Dr Roisín Higgins (Teesside University)

On Wednesday the 29th May, join Desmond Ryan for an informal conversation with Prof Phillip Morgan from the University of York in association with the School of Law. Professor Morgan's research project will look at Tort Law, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems, and Machine Learning. His research asks whether the law of tort will need to adapt to meet the demands which new technologies will place on it.

This work has the opportunity to help shape legislation and legal developments in Ireland, and England. Mr Morgan’s work has already assisted courts (including the Supreme Court of Ireland) and government bodies around the world to develop the law of vicarious liability, and tort, to challenging modern conditions.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Fellow in Focus with Philip Morgan

Recorded April 15, 2019.

In conversation with Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Alex Alsemgeest (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands) chaired by Laura Shanahan (TCD) organised in collaboration with the Library of Trinity College Dublin.

Alex Alsemgeest is a book historian and researcher with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands. Alex has more than a decade of experience in some of the leading research libraries in the Netherlands and Sweden. His research interests include book trade, natural history, the history of libraries and collections and Swedish-Dutch cultural history. He has published in both popular magazines and academic journals. His book, In krabbengang door kreeftenboeken, was nominated for best book on nature in the Netherlands in 2016.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Fellow in Focus with Alex Alsemgeest

Recorded April 3, 2019.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Fellow in Focus with Leo Lefebure

Recorded March 27, 2019.

A Fellow in Focus with Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Prof Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape) chaired by Prof Steve Wilmer (TCD) organised in collaboration with the School of Creative Arts.

Professor Lalu will also show his recent documentary short titled 'Looking For Ned' which explores the aftermath of the murder of Professor Lalu's friend in South Africa.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Fellow in Focus with Premesh Lalu

Recorded April 9, 2019.

An in conversation with Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Dr Simona Marchesini (Alteritas, Verona) chaired by Prof Anna Chahoud (TCD) organised in collaboration with Trinity’s Manuscript, Book and Print Cultures Research Theme

Dr Marchesini's current research investigates the function of the writing culture of Grotta Poesia, an ancient cave-sanctuary in southern Apulia, Italy, which has provided one of the richest set of rock inscriptions of the ancient world.

Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Fellow in Focus with Dr Simona Marchesini

Opened in 2010, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute is dedicated to advancing Trinity College Dublin’s rich tradition of research excellence in the Arts and Humanities, on an individual, collaborative and inter-disciplinary basis.

TLRH | Fellow in Focus with Prof Premesh Lalu (University of the Western Cape)

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