NPPSH Conference

Children often find themselves at the centre of a variety of legal disputes and, as a result, they may enter the court system through a number of possible doors. Some of these disputes involve disagreements between parents, while others involve the possibility of state intervention due to child protection and safety concerns. What must be remembered is that children's futures are significantly impacted by the door through which their family enters the legal system. In Ireland, there are many instances where parents recognise that they are unable to care for their children and these children are received into care through a voluntary care agreement. However, the details of the parenting plan are often left vague, with the potential for future disagreement. In many instances, such voluntary care agreements result in applications to court leading to high tensions and a breakdown of trust between the parents and the child welfare agencies (section 4 of the Child Care Act, 1991). This process of reaching “agreements” may, in some circumstances, more appropriately be managed through alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation. Unfortunately, the use of mediation within child protection cases is not current practice in Ireland. Building on this existing research regarding alternative dispute resolution processes, this paper will examine child protection mediation programs operating in the USA and explore the largely uncharted potential of child protection mediation in an Irish context. This will inform policy and state actors as to the potential benefits/disadvantages of developing child-inclusive mediation at a national level.

Rebecca Murphy graduated from Maynooth University with a double first-class honours degree in law and music (BCL). Since July 2015, Rebecca Murphy has been employed by the Courts Service as a judicial assistant/researcher for Her Honour, Judge Rosemary Horgan, and President of the District Court, who has extensive knowledge in all areas of family and child care law. Rebecca’s role as a judicial assistant/researcher has allowed her the opportunity to witness the realities and in some cases the distresses of family and child protection proceedings brought before the Dublin Metropolitan District (DMD) on a daily basis.

Fiosraíonn an páipéar seo an idirghabháil atá idir filí na gceantar Gaeltachta seo i gCiarraí agus an pobal léitheoireachta. Is gníomh imeallach é an fhilíocht in aon teanga – gan trácht ar mhionteanga a bhfuil dúshláin éagsúla roimpi. I measc an chomhthéacs dúshlánach seo, tá líon suntasach filí ag cumadh na filíochta i ndá cheantar Gaeltachta i gCiarraí. Léiríonn na filí amhras ar leith go bhfuil aon phobal léitheoireachta acu agus deir cuid acu nach mbíonn siad ag cuimhneamh ar an bpobal léitheoireachta ina gcleachtas cruthaitheachta. In ainneoin seo, tá na filí an-ghníomhnach i bhfoilsiú saothar filíochta. Téann an dearcadh seo i gcoinne theoiricí móra na cruthaitheachta a leagann béim ar thábhacht an chomhthéacs agus ar thábhacht na hidirghabhála leis an bpobal léitheoireachta maidir le cruthú chiall an ghníomh chruthaithigh. (Ó Crualaoich 1992, Glăveanu 2016 & Sternberg 2016). Muna bhfuil na filí ag cuimhneamh ar an bpobal léitheoireachta – conas go mbeidh pobal ann dóibh? Cén ról atá ag na filí seo sna pobail Ghaeltachta mar sin? Féachann an páipéar ar cheist an easpa pobail léitheoireachta agus ar an tost indíreach a ghintear as an saothrú pearsanta seo. Mar a d’aithin an file Paddy Bushe ‘Aon ealaíontóir a dhéanann dearúd ar phobal, bíonn sé ag labhairt leis féin’. Chuige sin, díreofar ar thuairimí pearsanta na bhfilí a nochtadh in agallaimh agus déanfar anailís téacslárnach mar thaca don bplé.

This paper seeks to tell the story of a group of active, contemporary Irish language poets of the south and west Kerry Gaeltacht areas of Corca Dhuibhne and Uíbh Ráthach. These poets demonstrate a meta-awareness of being a relatively unheard voice, they deem their work to be generally unread and as a result present with a sense of doubt as to whether an audience even exists for their poetry. Despite this, the poets continue to publish material and engage in public readings and performances. Marginalisation forms part of each of the poets’ lives due to several factors, from writing in a minority language, being based physically on the edge of Europe, engaging in poetry, a creative mode that tends to have a limited audience even in majority languages, along with finding refuge in isolation as an important part of the creative process. The paper will highlight a range of thoughts and ideologies pertaining to this sense of indirect silence and lack of audience, drawing on material from interviews with several of the poets. It aims to provide an interpretation of this phenomenon of writing for an audience, whom does not appear to be present, with a particular focus on the poets’ feelings and outlook to this regard.

Tá Shane Grant mar mhac léinn PhD le Roinn na Gaeilge i gColáiste Mhuire Gan Smál, Luimneach. Cáilíodh é mar bhunmhúinteoir i 2016 agus bronnadh ‘Comhaltacht Taighde’ air sa bhliain 2017. Baineann a chuid taighde le filí comhaimseartha na Gaeilge i ndá cheantar Gaeltachta i gCiarraí; Corca Dhuibhne agus Uíbh Ráthach faoi stiúir an Dr. Róisín Ní Ghairbhí. Féachann an taighde ar conas a ghintear, a chothaítear agus a chleachtaítear an chruthaitheacht sa Ghaeilge ag díriú ar na ceantair seo mar chás-staidéar. Tá spéis ar leith ag aige i bhfilíocht chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge, sa tsochtheangeolaíocht, i bhfoghlaim an tarna teanga, i bpleanáil teanga agus i bhforbairt pobail Ghaeltachta.

Shane Grant is a PhD student with the Irish Department in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. Shane graduated as a primary school teacher in 2016 following his completion of the Bachelor of Education (B.ED) programme. He was awarded a Departmental Assistantship with the college in 2017 to undertake his postgraduate studies under the supervision of Dr. Róisín Ní Ghairbhí. His research is concerned with the practices and fostering of a group of Irish poets linked to the West Kerry Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibhne and South Kerry Gaeltacht of Uíbh Ráthach.

Kristin Morrison, lamenting the amnesia surrounding Ireland’s “ancient nautical heritage” (111), asks, “how does the fact that Ireland is surrounded by water manifest itself in contemporary fiction? […] how does that fiction conceive of a ‘mainland’?” (111). Critical attention towards the representation of Ireland as an island in literature has been lacking until relatively recently. Scholars from many disciplines have begun to redress this through a consideration of Irish coasts in projects such as UCC’s Deep Maps and UCD’s Cultural Value of Coastlines. This paper continues some of these conversations by turning specifically to contemporary Irish poetry and interrogating how Ireland figures as an island in the work of important poets. Using recent work published in Island Studies Journal which posits that islands are presented through sensory and spatial experiences (Graziadei et al.), this paper examines the work of Seamus Heaney and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin within a framework which analyses the effects of these sensory and spatial cues. It provides a new perspective on two canonical writers, shifting attention from a land-based, rural outlook by situating Heaney’s and Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry within important conversations around the study of islands. It will discuss, visual, aural and spatial conceptions of islands in the work of these two poets to come to an understanding of how Ireland’s ‘islandness’ is presented. Crucially, in asking these questions of Heaney’s and Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry, larger questions about the island itself are implicitly addressed. Ireland is the world’s 20th largest island and in examining what its island status means, we can begin to see and hear Ireland anew.

- Graziadei, Daniel et al. ‘On Sensing Island Spaces and the Spatial Practice of Island-Making: Introducing Island Poetics, Part I’. Island Studies Journal 12.2 (2017): 239–252. Print.

- Morrison, Kristin. ‘Ireland and the Sea: Where Is the “Mainland”?’ Back to the Present, Forward to the Past: Irish Writing and History since 1798. Ed. Patricia A. Lynch, Joachim Fischer, and Brian Coates. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. 111–123. Print.

Ellen Howley is a PhD student in the School of English at Dublin City University. She has previously studied in UCD, the Sorbonne, Paris and the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on contemporary Irish and Caribbean poetry and is concentrated on the work of Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney (Ireland) and Derek Walcott (St. Lucia) as well as current Professor for Poetry Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Ireland) and Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison (Jamaica). She has published in the Irish Literary Supplement.

This paper seeks to examine the haunting function of the bog in the poetry of Seamus Heaney through the theoretical lens of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. The paper argues that the present and future are influenced by spectres of the past through what Derrida would term hauntology with Derrida himself noting that ‘a ghost never dies, it always remains to come and to come-back’ (Derrida 2006, p.123). In the bog poems Heaney uses the bog as a way of viewing contemporary violence from a wider, older, Northern European perspective. Similarities are drawn between contemporary Northern Ireland and that of Scandinavia in the poetry and it is the circular, repetitive nature of history that enables the poet to locate a plateau, outside his primary world, to view the events of his present world. The spectres voice influences and guides the unconscious of the poet and society in a manner that makes history repeat itself, albeit under a different guise with Derrida noting that ‘we inherit the very thing that allows us to bear witness to it’(Derrida 2006, p.68). The function of the bog in the poetry will be traced through the poems ‘Bogland’, ‘The Tollund Man’ and ‘Punishment’ in order to show how the spectres voices escalated to coincide with the violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Ian Hickey is a Ph.D research student under the supervision of Dr. Eugene O’Brien in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His current field placement is in Mary Immaculate College as a departmental assistant in the Department of English Language and Literature. He is interested in Modern Irish poetry and fiction, Irish theatre, hauntology and literary theory.

#MeToo and #IBelieveHer vocalised personal traumas within the frame of a global conversation about sexual violence, and a movement to carve out space for the most disenfranchised under capitalist patriarchy. However, not every story of trauma, marginalisation and repression is suitable for a hashtag; there are some stories that society still denies mainstream attention and acceptability because of an unwillingness to engage with the difficult and complex issues they bring to the fore. The surge in writing about the complicated maternal experience in the last decade has not been paralleled by mainstream visual representation precisely because of this fact. The previously unheard voice of the mother continues to go largely unseen. This paper will outline recent developments in French art-house cinema to give this ‘seen’ dynamic to alternative stories of maternal trauma, ambivalence and rebellious transformation. Our Children (2012), 17 Girls (2011) and A Happy Event (2011) explore undersides of the maternity narrative that range from difficult pregnancies, to the weaponisation of pregnancy as a tool to dismantle capitalist patriarchy, to that most taboo of maternal traumas: infanticide. This paper will draw on the work of Rye and Chodorow, and their interrogations of motherhood narratives and stereotypes, to locate these three films within larger myths about mothering as a site of positive transformation and analyse individually their subversion of this trope. Finally, this paper will conclude with an analysis of the place of such visual representations of darker maternity narratives within the larger mainstream conversations about female liberation from patriarchy.

Ciara Gorman is currently a candidate for the MA in French at Maynooth University, where she completed her undergraduate degree in French and Law. She intends to pursue a PhD in French in the near future so that she may pursue a third-level teaching career. Her areas of research include the detective novel and women’s writing. The topic of her MA thesis is Louis XIV iconology in the current French presidency.

This paper analyses Breandán Ó hEithir's use of music in constructing and reconstructing community throughout his novel Lead Us Into Temptation (Lig Sinn I gCathú, 1976/1978). It also explores the role that music plays in memory, political affiliation and expression, and communitas within both the text and wider Irish society during the middle of the twentieth century. Musical participation is an important aspect of collectivity and communitas. It is a public articulation of adherence to community values, and carries with it culturally encoded understandings of cultural and political (dis)affiliation. While music is a kind of social mortar, as Ó Laoire (2005) observes it also exists as a “veiled discourse, which may at once uphold the social system at the very moment it criticizes it”. Ó hEithir’s novel deals with lingering issues of affiliation and disaffiliation, and points out the problematic nature of the nation through the eyes of a fictional town closely modelled on Galway. One of the preoccupations of the text is the competition between voices surrounding the declaration of the Irish Republic in Easter Week 1949, which is presented in the text as unifying and divisive in alternate measures. In Lead Us Into Temptation, music brings simmering tensions to the surface and shatters a tenuous sense of unity coloured by ambivalence and occlusion. This is encapsulated by snatches of music leading to a climactic cacophony of competing musical voices in the commemorative parade, during which ironically the louder the voice is, the less it is truly heard.

Chris is a first year PhD candidate in English at the National University of Ireland Galway. His current research analyses the role of music as a device for the creation of social hierarchy within Irish prose literature of the twentieth century. His research interests are in word and music studies, and the coalescence of visual and aural art forms in prose literature. He completed his MA, entitled Singing Exile: Music in Irish Emigration Literature, at The University of Notre Dame Fremantle in Western Australia in early 2017.

Film students know how challenging it is to distribute their independent works in the absence of financial or other supports. At the moment too little attention is paid to the problem of distribution in film schools and universities, and it is very rare to find curricula offering distribution courses or even providing useful distribution tips. Moreover, many young artists fear screening their student works and consider them mere shooting exercises. This is not always the case, and notable films may have been kept unreleased or had extremely limited distribution.

Therefore, this topic opens these questions:

· Why are young Italian and Irish film students afraid to get their hands dirty and refrain from distributing their works? What kind of obstacles do they encounter?

· What plans can film schools put into action to teach students distribution?

· Is it possible to spread/share a proper film distribution culture?

My study will try to answer these questions by analysing a few case studies from Italy and Ireland. Based on my past experiences as a documentary film student and on interviews with a number of students and graduates from these two countries, my presentation will identify problems and suggest possible solutions that could support the distribution of independent films and the development of young filmmakers’ work.

Davide Abbatescianni is a PhD Excellence Scholar in Film and Screen Media at University College Cork. His research project, entitled Young Filmmakers in the Time of the Great Recession: A Focus on the Irish and Italian Film Industries, comprises an academic dissertation and the making of a feature documentary. He holds a Professional Diploma in Stage Directing (International Theatre Academy of the Adriatic), a BA in Communication Studies (University of Bari) and an MA in Documentary Directing (Baltic Film School). He currently works as a foreign correspondent for the EU-funded film magazine Cineuropa. He is also active as a director and assistant director.

Questions of voice, agency, participation and empowerment are central to the practice of community development, and for this reason it has been has been described as a subversive occupation (Ife 2013). Its way of working is to challenge and question the done thing, the taken-for-granted. Yet, funding cuts and structural changes within the field since 2008 have seen the spaces for community work increasingly narrowed and squeezed (Harvey 2015; Community Work Ireland 2017). This situation places community workers in a dilemma: do they cease telling uncomfortable stories and cease being true to the values of community work; do they step away from long term community struggles? This panel details research from the field of community work that speaks back to such restrictive forces as communities and practitioners struggle to find their voices: From the voices of marginalised older men in Dublin city, to a community finding their voice when faced with the threat of fracking and the voices of community workers themselves as they navigate a path for critical practice in neoliberal times. Bringing together three community worker who are engaged in research, this panel seeks, as Okri evocatively suggests, to ‘breach and confound the accepted frontier of things’ by amplifying unseen voices and placing them at the centre of conversations about social change in Ireland.

Dave Donovan is a PhD researcher in the Department of Applied Social Studies in Maynooth University. His research is a narrative study of community workers professions. He lives and works in Galway city.

Questions of voice, agency, participation and empowerment are central to the practice of community development, and for this reason it has been has been described as a subversive occupation (Ife 2013). Its way of working is to challenge and question the done thing, the taken-for-granted. Yet, funding cuts and structural changes within the field since 2008 have seen the spaces for community work increasingly narrowed and squeezed (Harvey 2015; Community Work Ireland 2017). This situation places community workers in a dilemma: do they cease telling uncomfortable stories and cease being true to the values of community work; do they step away from long term community struggles? This panel details research from the field of community work that speaks back to such restrictive forces as communities and practitioners struggle to find their voices: From the voices of marginalised older men in Dublin city, to a community finding their voice when faced with the threat of fracking and the voices of community workers themselves as they navigate a path for critical practice in neoliberal times. Bringing together three community worker who are engaged in research, this panel seeks, as Okri evocatively suggests, to ‘breach and confound the accepted frontier of things’ by amplifying unseen voices and placing them at the centre of conversations about social change in Ireland.

Tommy Coombes manages the Bluebell Community Development Project. His doctoral research, at the Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University, explores stories of the lived experiences of older men residing in a sheltered housing complex in Dublin.

Questions of voice, agency, participation and empowerment are central to the practice of community development, and for this reason it has been has been described as a subversive occupation (Ife 2013). Its way of working is to challenge and question the done thing, the taken-for-granted. Yet, funding cuts and structural changes within the field since 2008 have seen the spaces for community work increasingly narrowed and squeezed (Harvey 2015; Community Work Ireland 2017). This situation places community workers in a dilemma: do they cease telling uncomfortable stories and cease being true to the values of community work; do they step away from long term community struggles? This panel details research from the field of community work that speaks back to such restrictive forces as communities and practitioners struggle to find their voices: From the voices of marginalised older men in Dublin city, to a community finding their voice when faced with the threat of fracking and the voices of community workers themselves as they navigate a path for critical practice in neoliberal times. Bringing together three community worker who are engaged in research, this panel seeks, as Okri evocatively suggests, to ‘breach and confound the accepted frontier of things’ by amplifying unseen voices and placing them at the centre of conversations about social change in Ireland.

Jamie Gorman is a PhD researcher in community development at the Maynooth University Department of Applied Social Studies. His research is a case study of community action for environmental justice in the north-west of Ireland. He is a board member of Community Work Ireland and the Chairperson of Friends of the Earth Ireland.