The Royal Irish Academy

Listen to Professor Michael Peter Kennedy reflect on the role of a Learned Academy in the Royal Irish Academy Presidential Discourse.

About the Discourse

Since the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660, learned academies around the world have shared a common mission of fostering science, learning and academic research. Today, academies are independent self-governing bodies of distinguished scholars drawn from the fields of natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. They contain a unique human resource of intellectual excellence, experience and multidisciplinary knowledge dedicated to the advancement of science and scholarship. Some academies perform research, some are publishers, many are custodians of national cultural treasures, most recognise excellence through prizes and grants, all contribute to public debate in their home countries. This Discourse by the President of the Royal Irish Academy, Professor Michael Peter Kennedy explores the invaluable contributions that learned academies already make to society, opportunities for them to contribute more, and the challenges to their remaining vibrant and relevant in a world that needs but does not always understand evidence-based research.

About the speaker

Michael Peter Kennedy is Professor of Microelectronic Engineering at University College Dublin. (UCD) and Scientific Director of the Microelectronic Circuits Centre Ireland. He received the BE (Electronics) degree from UCD, the MSc and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and the DEng from the National University of Ireland. He worked with Philips, UCC and UCD and has held visiting academic appointments in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, the UK and the United States.

He has over 400 publications, including monographs and patents, ranging from “blue skies” to applied research, in the fields of chaos theory, neural networks, nonlinear dynamics, mixed-signal test, and frequency synthesis. He was made a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) in 1998 “for contributions to the theory of neural networks and nonlinear dynamics and for leadership in nonlinear circuits research and education.”

He was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2004, served four years as Secretary for Policy and International Relations, and is currently serving as President.

Brendan O’Leary Hon. MRIA discusses his latest three volume book 'A Treatise on Northern Ireland' with Ben Lowry, Deputy Editor, News Letter .

Brendan O'Leary is an Irish, European Union, and US citizen, and since 2003 the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of twenty eight books and collections, and the author or co-author of hundreds of articles or chapters in peer-reviewed journals, university presses, encyclopedia articles, and other forms of publication, including op-eds. His latest production is a three-volume study called A Treatise on Northern Ireland, published by Oxford University Press, which has been positively reviewed in the Dublin Review of Books, the Irish News, and the Irish Times.

He recently co-authored a research report, Northern Ireland and the UK’s Exit from the EU: What Do People Think? Evidence from Two Investigations: A Survey and a Deliberative Forum (PI: Garry, J., McNicholl, K., O’Leary, B., & Pow, J., Queen’s University Belfast, 2018 sponsored by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council), and is currently researching the UK's secession from the EU, and possible models of Irish re-unification.

Ben Lowry is a distinguished journalist and political commentator from Northern Ireland. Inter alia he has articulated the view that Northern Ireland’s establishment was an essential part of the administration of the island of Ireland.

When: Wednesday, January 8, 2020, 19:30 - 21:00

Where: Benburb Priory Library and Museum, Main Street, Benburb, Co Tyrone BT 71 7JZ

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Daniel Roberts, Queen’s University Belfast. The third lecture in our series on 'Discovering Thomas Moore.'

This lecture series accompanied our exhibition 'Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe'. Curated by musicologist Dr Sarah McCleave, School of Arts, English & Languages, QUB, the exhibition and lecture series exposes the breadth of Moore’s research and writing about Ireland and explores Moore’s role as an Irish writer with an international reputation in positioning Ireland within Europe through cultural exchange. It also addresses contemporary European fascination with the orient and Moore’s influential role in depicting eastern culture, particularly via his hugely successful work, Lalla Rookh.

Location: Academy House

Date: Wednesday 6 November, 2019

Speaker:

Daniel Sanjiv Roberts teaches Eighteenth-Century and Romantic-Period Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. He has edited Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey and written extensively on Romanticism and the East.

Disclaimer:

The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Professor Harry White, MRIA, Professor of Music at University College Dublin. The first lecture in our series on 'Discovering Thomas Moore.'

This lecture series accompanied our exhibition 'Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe'. Curated by musicologist Dr Sarah McCleave, School of Arts, English & Languages, QUB, the exhibition and lecture series exposes the breadth of Moore’s research and writing about Ireland and explores Moore’s role as an Irish writer with an international reputation in positioning Ireland within Europe through cultural exchange. It also addresses contemporary European fascination with the orient and Moore’s influential role in depicting eastern culture, particularly via his hugely successful work, Lalla Rookh.

This lecture was part of the Dublin Festival of History programme.

Location: Academy House

Date : Wednesday 9 October, 2019

Speaker:

Harry White is Professor of Music at University College Dublin and a Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His publications include The Keeper's Recital (1998), The Progress of Music in Ireland (2005), Music and the Irish Literary Imagination (2008) and (with Barra Boydell) The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2013). He was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2006 and to the Academy of Europe in 2015. In 2018, he became the first Irish person to be elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Disclaimer:

The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Sarah McCleave, senior lecturer in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. The fourth lecture in our series on 'Discovering Thomas Moore.'

This lecture series accompanied our exhibition 'Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe'. Curated by musicologist Dr Sarah McCleave, School of Arts, English & Languages, QUB, the exhibition and lecture series exposes the breadth of Moore’s research and writing about Ireland and explores Moore’s role as an Irish writer with an international reputation in positioning Ireland within Europe through cultural exchange. It also addresses contemporary European fascination with the orient and Moore’s influential role in depicting eastern culture, particularly via his hugely successful work, Lalla Rookh.

Location: Academy House

Date: Wednesday 13 November, 2019

Speaker:

Sarah McCleave, a musicologist, is a senior lecturer in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. A founding member of the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen’s, her research on the Gibson-Massie Moore collection at Queen’s led to the Horizon 2020-funded project ERIN: Europe’s Reception of the Irish Melodies and National Airs: Thomas Moore in Europe. McCleave is co-editor of two volumes of essays on Thomas Moore (Routledge, 2017 and 2020); she considers Moore’s working methods in her chapter, “The genesis of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies”, for Cheap Print and Popular Song in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She has also published on Moore and Irish song through the ‘Romantic National Song Network.'

Disclaimer:

The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Dr Tríona O'Hanlon, violinist and musicologist. The second lecture in our series on 'Discovering Thomas Moore.'

This lecture series accompanied our exhibition 'Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe'. Curated by musicologist Dr Sarah McCleave, School of Arts, English & Languages, QUB, the exhibition and lecture series exposes the breadth of Moore’s research and writing about Ireland and explores Moore’s role as an Irish writer with an international reputation in positioning Ireland within Europe through cultural exchange. It also addresses contemporary European fascination with the orient and Moore’s influential role in depicting eastern culture, particularly via his hugely successful work, Lalla Rookh.

Location: Academy House

Date: Wednesday 30 October, 2019

Speaker:

Tríona O’Hanlon is a violinist and musicologist. She received her PhD in Musicology in 2012 from the Technological University Dublin. Tríona was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow in Music at the School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast for 2015–17 where she worked on the Horizon 2020 funded project ERIN: Europe’s Reception of the Irish Melodies and National Airs; Thomas Moore in Europe. She has held research fellowships at Marsh’s Library, Dublin (2014), The Royal Dublin Society Library and Archives (2015), and she was awarded a Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Grant for 2016. She is the first musicologist ever to receive the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr., Research Grant awarded by the Keats-Shelly Association of America (2017). Tríona’s research interests include the historiography of music in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dublin; song culture and its dissemination; source studies and bibliography.

Disclaimer:

The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

Library Lunchtime Lecture by Professor Úna Hunt, Professor of Music Performance Research at the TU Dublin Conservatory. The fifth lecture in our series on 'Discovering Thomas Moore.'

This lecture series accompanied our exhibition 'Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe'. Curated by musicologist Dr Sarah McCleave, School of Arts, English & Languages, QUB, the exhibition and lecture series exposes the breadth of Moore’s research and writing about Ireland and explores Moore’s role as an Irish writer with an international reputation in positioning Ireland within Europe through cultural exchange. It also addresses contemporary European fascination with the orient and Moore’s influential role in depicting eastern culture, particularly via his hugely successful work, Lalla Rookh.

Location: Academy House

Date: Wednesday 20 November, 2019

Speaker:

Una Hunt is Professor of Music Performance Research at the TU Dublin Conservatory and, as a prominent Moore scholar, has published widely on the subject. Her seminal book: ‘Sources and Style in Moore’s Irish Melodies’ is published by Routledge. Una also enjoys a flourishing career as an international pianist and curated a 38-venue national tour of Moore’s Irish Melodies in 2008 and has since performed Moore in many prestigious international venues including Carnegie Hall, New York. Her discography of world-premiere CDs on Irish music includes the first ever complete archive of the Irish Melodies (6CD box set: My Gentle Harp, 2008) and a collection of the songs performed with a period instrument – Moore’s Irish Melodies, the Square Piano Recordings (2009). She compiled the multi-media outputs for the exhibition first shown at the Royal Irish Academy: My Gentle Harp – Moore’s Irish Melodies, 1808-2008, which was subsequently toured across Ireland and viewed by 100,000 people.

Una is also an award-winning radio producer and presenter and has compiled numerous features for the BBC and RTE, including the 6-programme series: My Gentle Harp. She is presently collaborating with Wexford Festival Opera to mount a performance of The Veiled Prophet opera by Irish composer, Charles Villiers Stanford, based on Moore’s oriental romance, Lalla Rookh.

Disclaimer:

The Royal Irish Academy has prepared this content responsibly and carefully, but disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the information contained in any of the materials. The views expressed are the authors’ own and not those of the Royal Irish Academy.

On Tuesday 28 November 2018 neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire discussed memory failure as part of her Discourse.

Complaints of memory failure are among the most common in clinical settings and these will continue to rise as life expectancy increases. Accordingly, a desire to improve memory and temper the anxiety associated with its loss, represent significant societal concerns. A distributed set of brain regions supports memory and critical among them is the hippocampus, so-called because early anatomists likened it to a seahorse.

In this Discourse, Professor Maguire draws upon evidence from virtual reality, brain imaging and studies of amnesia to show that the consequences of hippocampal damage are even more far-reaching than suspected, not only robbing us of our past, but preventing us from inhabiting our imagination and contemplating the future, changing our sleep, as well as impairing the ability to navigate effectively in the environment, and even altering our perception of the world.

Professor Elizabeth FitzPatrick, School of Geography and Archaeology, NUI Galway and Professor Hugh Byrne, FOCAS Research Institute, TU Dublin.

Revealing the past: archaeological excavation and research in Ireland' This biennial seminar was held on 10 October 2019 and show cased a selection of recent discoveries from archaeological excavation and related research in Ireland funded by the National Monuments Service, and from C14 dating research funded by Queen’s University Belfast, through grants administered by the Royal Irish Academy's Standing Committee for Archaeology.

Dr Susan Lyons, Environmental Archaeological Consultant and Mr Cóilín Ó Drisceoil, Kilkenny Archaeology

Revealing the past: archaeological excavation and research in Ireland' This biennial seminar was held on 10 October 2019 and show cased a selection of recent discoveries from archaeological excavation and related research in Ireland funded by the National Monuments Service, and from C14 dating research funded by Queen’s University Belfast, through grants administered by the Royal Irish Academy's Standing Committee for Archaeology.