The Center for Irish Studies at Villanova University Podcast Series

This podcast features novelist and our 2026 Heimbold Chair Cauvery Madhavan speaking with two poets from Queens University's Seamus Heaney Centre - Niamh Twomey, and Emma Devlin. They discuss the importance of creative community, emphasizing that writing is not purely solitary but shaped by conversation, friendship, teaching, reading, and exchange.

A major focus is how environmental concerns and the climate crisis enter their work naturally rather than didactically. Devlin describes fiction shaped by transformation and ecological change, while Twomey discusses her eco-feminist reimagining of Irish myth through poetry. Together, the conversation highlights writing as a powerful way to respond to change, grief, imagination, and the natural world.

This episode features University College Cork historians John Borgonovo and Hiram Morgan discussing the future of Irish historical scholarship after Ireland’s recent “decade of centenaries,” which commemorated events like the Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War. As Irish history shifts from commemorating revolutionary milestones, it is moving towards addressing contemporary issues through historical perspective—such as immigration and multiculturalism in modern Ireland, environmental degradation and land use, the legacy of colonial economic systems, debates about Irish neutrality and European security, and the ongoing constitutional future of Northern Ireland.

In this conversation with Center Director Joseph Lennon, they explore the democratizing impact of digital archives like CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts), the role of diaspora narratives in connecting Irish history to global migration stories, and the importance of humanities disciplines in an age of AI and digital information. They remind us that history is not only about the past but also a tool for interpreting present challenges and informing cultural, political, and ethical debates in contemporary society.

John Borgonovo is a Senior Lecturer in the School of History at University College Cork. He has published extensively on different aspects of Ireland’s First World War and Revolutionary experiences. He was a co-editor of the critically acclaimed Atlasof the Irish University which was made into a television series. An active public historian, John frequently appears on Irish television and radio.

Hiram Morgan (born Belfast, 1960) is a historian at University College Cork, where he has lectured since 1996. Educated at St Patrick’s College Knock and the University of Cambridge (BA–PhD), he is the author of Tyrone’s Rebellion (Royal Historical Society, 1993) and editor of several volumes including Political Ideology in Ireland (1999) and The Battle of Kinsale (2004). He co-founded History Ireland magazine and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals. Morgan currently directs CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts at UCC, one of the world’s largest digital resources for Irish studies.

Charles Strozier is the author of Making Peace in Northern Ireland: The Miracle of the Good Friday Agreement. In this conversation with Center Director Joseph Lennjon, Strozier discusses his distinctive approach to history—one that blends psychoanalytic insight with political and cultural analysis—to understand how empathy and inner transformation shaped the peace process. Reflecting on decades of scholarship spanning Abraham Lincoln, 9/11, and apocalyptic thought, Strozier traces how his curiosity about the psychology of violence and reconciliation led him to study figures like John Hume, David Trimble, Ian Paisley, and John Alderdice, the key “dramatis personae” of the Good Friday Agreement.

Strozier explores the inner lives behind political change—how the painstaking act of listening across divides created what he calls “radical empathy,” making peace possible after generations of sectarian violence. The discussion ranges from the gendered dynamics of the talks to Northern Ireland’s shifting cultural identity in the post-Brexit era, concluding with Strozier’s reflections on hope, healing, and his current work on the psychology of idealization. It’s an illuminating look at how understanding human emotion and imagination can help explain not only history, but also the possibility of reconciliation in our own time.

Author Cauvery Madhavan discusses her journey from India to Ireland, where she reflects on the challenges and opportunities of migration, from adapting to small-town life to building community and a sense of belonging. In this conversation with Center Director Joseph Lennon, Madhavan emphasizes how migration shaped her identity and writing, blending Indian perspectives with Irish experiences, and how she and her family consciously chose to embrace Irishness while acknowledging their Indian roots. Through her novels—particularly The Inheritance and The Tainted—Madhavan explores the legacies of displacement, cultural hybridity, and the often complex histories of migrants and diasporas in Ireland and beyond.

Cauvery Madhavan is an Indian-born writer living in Ireland. She is the author of four books of fiction and writes for the Irish Times. She lives with her husband and three children in County Kildare. Her first novel, Paddy Indian, follows an Indian immigrant in Ireland. His stories of acclimation speak of identity, belonging, and the home the young man left. The Tainted is a fictionalized account of mutiny amongst the Irish ranks of the Connaught Rangers in India at the zenith of the British Raj in 1920 and engages issues of race, prejudice and postcoloniality. Her most recent novel, The Inheritance, is a historical fiction about religion, culture, and family life in rural communities, interwoven with the true history of The Long March of O’Sullivan Beara in 1601.

In this final episode of our 6th season, Emma DeSouza - a journalist and civic leader from the North of Ireland - has a conversation with Political Science and Irish Studies Professor Cera Murtagh. They explore the evolving role of women and youth in Irish politics and society, discussing Emma’s journey into public engagement, the importance of representation, her perspectives on journalism’s role in civic life, and the challenges and opportunities for empowering future generations across Ireland. This conversation was recorded in March of 2025during her visit to Villanova.

Emma DeSouza is the Founder and Co-facilitator of deliberative democracy platform The Civic Initiative, Director of the Northern Ireland Emerging Leaders Program at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York, and a transatlantic adviser on peace processes and civic innovation. As an award-winning campaigner she spearheaded an effort to change UK law in a landmark human rights case relating to the Good Friday Agreement.

Stephen Sexton is an Irish poet and a lecturer at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast. While on campus in March 2025 he sat down with the Center for Irish Studies Director Joseph Lennon to discuss howpoetry can help us navigate the world. He reads poems from his two books

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Stephen Sexton the author of two books of poems – If All the World and Love Were Young, published in 2019 and Cheryl’s Destinies, published in 2021.  He is a recipient of multipleawards, which include winning the National Poetry Competition in 2016, the Eric Gregory Award in 2018, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Shine / Strong Award for Best First Collection in 2019, the E. M. Forster Awardfrom the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2020.   Sexton has been teaching creative writing at the ⁠Seamus Heaney Centre⁠ for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast for six years.

Sexton was ten years old when the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought a formal end to the Troubles in the North of Ireland, which later in life made him realize that he was growing up in a time that he did not understand, and he became aware of a profound generational divide between him and his parents.  Sexton explains that in a sense, there is a “kind of ghostly history that is all around you, but you can’t access it in the same way that other people can, so as a consequence, it doesn’t necessarily show up in my writing.”  In his book, If All the World and Love Were Young, which happens to be set in 1998, there is one moment that addresses the Omagh bombing – a single deadliest attack in thirty years of violence that he remembers hearing about on the radio and then seeingon television.  But beyond that, the book is a blend of childhood memories that uses the analogy of a nineties Nintendo videogame, Mario Brothers, that digs into Sexton’s more personal recollections about the house that he grew up in and memories of his mother. 

Sexton’s more recent book of poems, Cheryl’s Destinies, was written during the COVID lockdown, where he explored a desire to bring together the improbable and the sensitive, hence the section of poems that imagines a collaboration between Billy Corgan lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins and Irish poet W.B Yeats. The book’s general theme of being obsessed with and anxious about the future came through the conversations between two strangers separated by a century, where they discuss the difficulty of making art. Sexton’s book questions the role of a poet and its connection to the role of a medium, as they both perform a similar function -- look at the world and interpret it.

Dan Colley is an Irish theater and film writer and director whose play, Lost Lear, had its North American premier at Villanova's Mullen Center for Performing Arts in February 2025.

While on campus Dan sat down with with Irish Studies and Theater faculty member Bess Rowen, to discuss his career in theater in general and Lost Lear, specifically.

Lost Lear is an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, is told from the point of view of Joy, a retired actor with dementia, who is living in an old memory of rehearsing “King Lear.” The staff of the nursing home where Joy lives facilitate her care by acting out her happy memories. Joy’s delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who, being cast as Cordelia, must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he is given.

https://www.dancolley.com/theatre/lostlear

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Dan Colley is a theater and film writer and director from Dublin. He specializes in ensemble-devised theater, young audience theater, comedy, community participation and outdoor spectacle. He has been the Artist in Residence in the Riverbank Arts Centre in County Kildare, Ireland since 2019.

https://www.dancolley.com/

The 1st episode of our 6th season features a conversation between Irish author and 2024 Heimbold Chair Emilie Pine, Villanova creative writing professor Adrienne Perry, Villanova student Charlotte Ralston and Center Director Joseph Lennon. They have a wide-ranging discussion about the writing process, flow and the role of the reader.

Emilie Pine is an award-winning Irish creative writer and scholar. Dr. Pine is professor of Modern Drama in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. She has published widely as an academic and critic, including The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Palgrave, 2011), and most recently The Memory Marketplace: Witnessing Pain in Contemporary Theatre (Indiana University Press, 2020). Dr. Pine served as editor of the Irish University Review from 2017 to 2021.

Widely regarded as a leading scholar of Irish cultural memory, Dr. Pine led Industrial Memories, an Irish Research Council funded project to witness Ireland's historic institutional abuse. She continues

As a writer, Dr. Pine collaborated with ANU Productions on the Ulysses 2.2 project in 2023, creating All Hardest of Woman at the National Maternity Hospital. Her first play, Good Sex, was a collaboration with Dead Centre Theatre Company, and was shortlisted for Best New Play and Best Production at the 2023 Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. She is the author of the bestselling essay collection, Notes to Self, which won the 2018 Irish Book of the Year award and has been translated into 15 languages. Her novel Ruth & Pen (2022) won the 2023 Kate O’Brien First Novel Award.

Adrienne Perry, earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College, and her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. From 2014-2016 she served as the Editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. In 2020, Adrienne received the inaugural

Charlotte Ralston recently graduated in 2024 with a BA English and Psychology with minor in Irish Studies.

Mícheál McCann is a poet from Derry City. His poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Review, Queering the Green and elsewhere. He is the author of Safe Home (Green Bottle Press, 2020), Keeper (Fourteen Publishing, 2022) and Waking Light (Skein Press, 2022) alongside Kerri ní Dochartaigh. He is the co-editor of Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), Trumpet (Poetry Ireland, 2020), the founding editor of catflap, and will be the editor of Poetry Ireland Review in summer 2024. His first collection of poems, Devotion, is forthcoming with The Gallery Press in May 2024. 

Bebe Ashley lives in County Down. Her work is recently published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her debut collection Gold Light Shining is published by Banshee Press and her second collection forthcoming in 2025. In 2023, Bebe received the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment (Text) and a Creative Practitioner Bursary from Belfast City Council. Her 3D-printed Braille poems will be featured in a six-month exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland from February 2024.

www.bebe-ashley.com

Dara McWade is a writer and workshop facilitator from Dublin, living in Belfast. He writes fiction and screenplays. His work can be found on BBC Radio Ulster, the Books Beyond Boundaries NI Anthology, and in the Apiary magazine, where he currently serves as editor-in-chief. He is the co-writer of the upcoming animated short “To Break a Circle,” and currently studies as a PhD candidate at Queen’s University Belfast.

Dara McWade <[email protected]>

Poets Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Katie Donovan and Jane Clarke write about an ethos of sustainability in their poetry.  Having grown up on farms in Ireland, they share insights on our interactions with the natural world and our place within it.  In this podcast Joseph Lennon discusses with them culture’s role in spreading an ethos of sustainability and living in harmony with the planet.  If the work of the poet is to see clearly, to remember without avoiding pain, and to imagine futures beyond the trials of the present, how does the poet represent climate change and sustainability?  We have many solutions to climate change, but one of the greatest challenges lies within ourselves and our will to prioritize climate action and climate care.