IRELAND'S EDGE

The use of data has become one of this century's most contentious legal and moral issues. But while the GDPR was designed to give citizens control of their own personal data in a world of Big Tech and intrusive states, issues from police surveillance to the "right to be forgotten" have shown how such control can have unintended social consequences. Christopher Kissane speaks with Dr David Kenny, Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin.

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On this episode, time to COP on: can the world still avoid climate change catastrophe?

In the past year both wildfires, floods, and droughts have highlighted the perilous state of the global environment, and the destabilising effects of man-made climate change.

The last seven years are the warmest since modern records began, and unprecedented extreme weather has been wreaking havoc across the globe.World leaders agreed to more action at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year, but is it all too little too late?

Dr Michael K Dorsey is an expert on global energy, environment, finance and sustainability, who has been prominent in global environmental politics since the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He has served as a Director of the Sierra Club and is a member of the Club of Rome. Thanks to the support of the US Embassy we were delighted to host him at Ireland’s Edge in Dingle, where he spoke to Muireann Kelliher.

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Writer Séamas O'Reilly's 'Remembering Ireland' project satirised our national obsession with historical memory, and the layers of distortion behind the question 'Do you remember this?’. As he became a father for the first time, Séamas explored his own memories in his memoir 'Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?', reflecting on how his own father had raised 11 children after losing the love of his life. The memoir also considers place and identity, exploring the troubled Derry of Séamas’s childhood, shedding light on a place often shrouded in stereotyped darkness. 

On this episode Christopher Kissane speaks to Séamas about what happens when memory and reality intersect, the significance of place, culture and identity, and the impact of Brexit in Northern Ireland. 

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Editor of the Guardian U.S John Mulholland reflects on an extraordinary few years in American news and considers the challenging road ahead. In December 2021 he sat down with Ireland's Edge Curator Muireann Kelliher and discussed the dark legacy of the Trump presidency, voter suppression, climate injustice, and one of the most significant events in American public life, the killing of George Floyd.

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‘What we saw happening around us was essentially death by a thousand cuts to Dublin’

The results of Irish housing policy have created a crisis that reaches into every community and region in the country. It increasingly blights the lives of multiple generations. It undermines and conflicts with many other national priorities and strategies. How has it got to this point and what will it take to ameliorate?

In this week’s episode, Living Room, we ask how our housing system became so broken, and what we can do to fix it?

In front of a live audience at Ireland’s Edge in Dingle, we were joined by: Orla Hegarty, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin; Rory Hearne, Assistant Professor of Social Policy at Maynooth University; and the architect Rob Curley. They spoke with Ireland’s Edge curator, Muireann Kelliher during Ireland's Edge in Dingle, in November 2021.

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We live in an age of fake news and social media, propaganda and conspiracy theories. From politics to pandemic, science to history, our public debates are increasingly divided between alternative versions of the world around us. In such febrile times, how can we go about distinguishing true from false, fact from fiction?

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin, and a regular columnist with The Irish Times. His work on 20th century Ireland has revised many myths about our recent past, in books about Eamon de Valera, the revolutionary decade, sex and religion, and most recently a history of our offshore islands.

At the National Gallery of Ireland, Diarmaid spoke with Dr David Kenny, Assistant Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin, where they discussed history, law, and different ways of discovering the truth.

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On this episode, Traversing the Uncanny Valley: how do we navigate the wild and wonderful world of the internet?

Roisin Kiberd is the author of The Disconnect: A Personal Journey through the Internet, which asks how we live now in a world that we increasingly experience online. The last year of remote working, learning and socialising have only further emphasised how the boundaries between the internet and our ‘real’ lives have become so porous as to be meaningless. From diet influencers to cheese brands, dating to data, Roisin explores the cultures and habits of this strange space.

At the National Gallery of Ireland, Roisin spoke with Ireland’s Edge curator Síobhra Quinlan about what we have learned in our creation of a more connected – and disconnected – new world.

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On this episode, What We Know Now: why did different truths dominate at different times of the Covid-19 pandemic?

From hand washing and sanitising to ventilation and vaccination, medical knowledge and public health advice have changed considerably over the course of the last 18 months. Yet even as we have learned more, outdated advice and habits have persisted. So did the science fail us, or did we fail the science? 

Orla Hegarty is Assistant Professor of Architecture at University College Dublin, and Aoife McLysaght is Professor of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin. Both have been prominent voices in Ireland’s public scientific debates over responses to the pandemic. At the National Gallery of Ireland, Orla and Aoife spoke with Ireland’s Edge curator Muireann Kelleher about what we know now.

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Morgan McIntyre from Belfast and Gemma Doherty from Derry met as students at Trinity College, Dublin, and formed the duo ‘Saint Sister’. Their debut album, The Shape of Silence, was nominated for both the Choice Music Prize and the Northern Irish Music Prize in 2018. That year, in the run-up to the referendum to repeal Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion, they wrote a song called ‘Manchester Air’, which explores a young couple’s journey across the Irish Sea after an unexpected pregnancy. 

For decades, tens of thousands of women had been forced to make such costly and traumatic journeys to access reproductive healthcare. While 2018’s momentous vote has finally seen the introduction of safe and legal abortion services in the Republic, women seeking such services in the North of Ireland are still being forced to travel abroad.

‘Manchester Air’ which was written on the island Inisheer off the west coast of Ireland was released on May 25th this year, the third anniversary of the referendum, and is featured on Saint Sister’s new album, ‘Where I Should End’, which comes out this month.

Molly King, Head of Development at Other Voices, spoke to Saint Sister about music, memories, and the story behind ‘Manchester Air’.

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“It’s the society first, and the economy comes afterwards”

On this episode, View From A Rock: what does the world’s turbulent political economy look like from our little island on the edge of the Atlantic?

Stephen Kinsella is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Limerick. He is Chief Economics Writer for The Currency, and as a columnist with the Sunday Business Post was twice named Economic Commentator of the Year.  His research focuses on how we can better understand Ireland’s small open economy, a task of particular importance in the age of pandemics, climate change, global tax reform, and Brexit. On this episode he speaks with Ireland’s Edge founder Muireann Kelliher, where Stephen began by offering his reaction to the performance by Dyrt that we featured on our previous episode.

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