The Royal Irish Academy

In this month’s ARINS podcast host Rory Montgomery speaks with Alan Whysall and Andrew McCormick. The discussion covers the topic of Improving Government in Northern Ireland, with a focus on Alan Whysall's recent report, “Improving Government in Northern Ireland: Towards a programme for reform”, which was published in May 2026 by the Constitution Unit of University College London.

This podcast series 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

In this episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Senator Patricia Stephenson.

Patricia Stephenson is Social Democrats Senator for the Labour Panel in Seanad Éireann.

Growing up in post-conflict Belfast, Patricia was influenced by the region’s challenges. Prior to her political career, she spent almost a decade working in international development, including six years living in East Africa, including South Sudan and Uganda.

Motivated by the struggles she has observed in accessing essential services and housing since returning to Ireland, she entered politics to advocate for change. She is a vocal proponent of women’s rights and prioritises marginalised voices in her approach to policy-making.

The My Identity series is 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 by Dr Susie Deedigan (University of Notre Dame).

In this month’s ARINS podcast host Rory Montgomery speaks with Adele Bergin, Seamus McGuinness and Conor Banahan of the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin about their recently published ARINS article ‘Who is Better Off? Updated Cross-Border Differences in Living Standards, Opportunities and Quality of Life on the Island of Ireland’. The discussion covers their recent work which provides an updated assessment of living standards, opportunities for life progression and well-being across the island of Ireland.

The article can be read open access, along with all ARINS publications, here: https://www.ria.ie/arins-research/who-is-better-off-updated-cross-border-differences-in-living-standards-opportunities-and-quality-of-life-on-the-island-of-ireland/

This podcast series 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.

In this episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Joy Gerrard and Paul Seawright.

This episode was recorded live, at Belfast Exposed as part of as part of the BIEN programme — an ongoing series of exhibitions and events under the title “British? Irish? Either? Neither?” sponsored by the Office of Identity and Cultural Expression (OICE).

Joy Gerrard lives and works in Belfast. She is known for work that investigates different systems of relations between crowds, architecture and the built environment. Using Japanese ink on paper and canvas Gerrard makes detailed ink works which re-create recent political protests from around the world, including recent work on UK based Brexit demonstrations and political protest in the USA.

Professor Paul Seawright OBE is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Ulster University. He was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences for five years and previously Head of Belfast School of Art. Paul has an international profile as an artist and researcher. His work is held in many museum collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, International Centre of Photography New York, Arts Councils of Ireland, England and Northern Ireland, the UK Government Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.

The My Identity series is 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.

About ARINS

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).

With thanks to Conor Patterson and Morgan Blain-Crehan, The Spinner’s Mill, Belfast.

Poem by Shirley O’Shea a writer from Carrick-on-Suir and a Teacher of English and German at St. Declan’s Community College, Kilmacthomas since 1999. She is an active participant of Poetry Plus in Brewery Lane Theatre. Her poem ‘With Grace and with Gratitude’ about Dr. Mary Strangman was published for SETU Blue Plaque unveiling at Carriganore House in Waterford in 2023. This poem and another ‘PJ 07’, was shortlisted for the Sean Dunne Literary award in June 2024.

Seven Years Transportation

(Taken women)

I wonder what they saw as they looked back over the stern of the Isabella or Sea Queen?

The ships conveying them eleven thousand miles away from home.

The convict girls, taken from Waterford city and county.

Offenders, mothers, mistresses, daughters,

Thievers and givers of food, cloaks and blankets,

Swapping petticoats and shawls for a life behind bars and a colony.

Culprits adjudged and condemned to Spike Island or Grangegorman,

Vagabond girls, subjected to earn their own living in felony,

Serving time till their freedom papers and tickets of leave.

Risk takers. Lawbreakers. No pardons or pleas.

Mary Moon. Deported 1834

The widow Mary stole a kerchief, and her child was taken from her.

A convict dressmaker traded in Van Dieman’s Island in Tasmania.

Hard labour or toil, nor her crude tongue could tame her,

The mischievous vixen escaped times over, as a deep poverty mania

Drove her forth in her anger and grief.

Better than the penalty of death but no less,

Not worth the mantilla, or the price she paid too steep.

In waters deep.

Ellen Lennehan. Deported 1842

Like Mary, Ellen had an eye for the style and fancied a petticoat,

That cost her more than the penny she would have paid for it,

And a shawl to go with it, pretty slippers, ten more months, was made pay

With no conditional or absolute pardon.

The shoes she required for her night on the town,

and she did not drown on her journey from Kingstown or Queenstown,

to Hobart female penitentiary,

and a life of continued brutality.

Margaret Daly. Deported 1847

This girl was one and twenty years, illiterate and abandoned,

stole a cloak and so exiled on the boat from Grangegorman,

Her convict trade to be made toil and scrub as a housemaid.

A freckled girl, with a gap in her smile, all the while,

Her 7 children did not survive or were orphaned.

7, the number unlucky for Margaret of Dungarvan.

Her Hemiplegic body paralysed by the loss and the grief.

37 the number of years in her life.

Bridget Crotty. Deported 1849

The Lismore girl stole three geese from Pat Walsh of Portlaw,

Made an outlaw of her and her friend Judith

Sent first to Grangegorman workhouse to await her passage,

Yet a quiet girl like Bridget understood the message

and good behaviour cut short her servitude, with her modest attitude,

and the flesh of the geese never made it to her belly

from Ballyduff to the rough seas,

going under to the hell of a retributive colony.

Judith Farrell. Deported 1849

Of Lismore and a friend of Ms Crotty, the geese stealer

She sailed down to hard labour without favour from healing

herself from the dysentery on the boat of transportation,

Frequented disorderly houses and stations

Where she took up with a fellow, a drunken braggard boaster,

Her black tale of woe ends with her rape and her murder.

No absence permitted or sanctitude or saviour,

She couldn’t escape from his fervour and venture.

Bridget Brien. Deported 1852

Ms Brien stole a hen at the height of the famine

To sustain starving children, 7 years transportation.

Transformed to a penal servant girl, dark haired and blue eyed

Her boy John Brien, age 4 by her side

was taken into the orphanage on arrival, the pain of survival.

Bereft Bridget heartbroken, caught drunk and absconding

One of 9000 women, repentant remanding.

The women of Waterford and Van Diemen’s landing.

What did they see when the glanced back over the stern?

They saw Ireland, to where they would never to return.

In this month’s ARINS podcast, Rory Montgomery is in conversation with Professor Nikos Skoutaris about his recent article ‘Accommodating Territorial Contestation and National Constitutional Change: The Cases of Cyprus and Ireland’ published by ARINS in Irish Studies in International Affairs.

The article is available open access, as are all ARINS publications, and can be read here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/423/article/963080

This is episode 50 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.

In this month’s ARINS podcast, Professor Brendan O’Leary (UPenn) and Professor John Garry (QUB) together with host Rory Montgomery discuss the recently published article they co-authored with Dr James Pow (QUB): My Symbols or Our Symbols? The Effect of Inclusive Narratives on the Acceptability of Out-Group Symbols.   https://muse.jhu.edu/article/970057/

The article is available open access in Irish Studies in International Affairs, as are all ARINS articles. 

This podcast series 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.

In this episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with

Queen’s University Belfast students James Tourish and Rea Thien.

Following the publication of For and Against a United Ireland by Fintan O’Toole and Sam

McBride, ARINS held two sold out events in collaboration with the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. The

first of these was an interactive debate for school pupils and university students. Colin met

with James and Rea immediately after the event, recording this conversation on site at the

Lyric to capture their reactions and discuss their thoughts about the event and the book.

James is in his second year studying Politics and International Relations at QUB, he identifies

as coming from an Irish Nationalist background having grown up in Derry. Rea recently

graduated from Law and Politics at QUB and grew up in Southern California.

The My Identity series is 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(opens in a new tab) 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(opens in a new tab)

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). With thanks to Conor Patterson and Morgan Blain-Crehan, The Spinner’s Mill, Belfast.

In this episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Drew Harris.

Jeremy Andrew Harris, OBE, QPM is a retired senior police officer who was Commissioner of An Garda Síochána from September 2018 to September 2025.

He previously served as Deputy Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) from 2014 to 2018. The My Identity series is 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.

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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). With thanks to Conor Patterson and Morgan Blain-Crehan, The Spinner’s Mill, Belfast.

ARINS Podcast 48: Beyond Identity and Ideology: how deliberation can reframe constitutional debate

In this month’s ARINS podcast, host Rory Montgomery discusses the Irish Studies in International Affairs article, Beyond Identity and Ideology: how deliberation can reframe constitutional debate with its authors Dr Shelley Deane (DCU), Professor Joanne McEvoy (Aberdeen) and Professor Jennifer Todd (UCD).

The article discusses a series of grassroots cross-border, cross-community deliberative cafes conducted by the researchers to discuss potential future constitutional change. The broader project considers how deliberation and engaging with ordinary people - in this case, women - an reframe the constitutional agenda.

Read the summary report: https://www.ria.ie/assets/uploads/2025/11/30.10.30-ARINS-Conference-A4-flier.pdf

A forthcoming article in Irish Studies in International Affairs will be available open access, as are all ARINS publications, which can be read on our website: https://www.ria.ie/research-programmes/arins/#latest-arins-articles

This podcast series 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.