The Royal Irish Academy

In this month’s ARINS podcast, former Deputy First Minister and leader of the SDLP, Mark Durkan discusses his political career with host Rory Montgomery. The conversation focuses on the recent book by Professor Graham Spencer, The SDLP, Politics and Peace: the Mark Durkan interviews which was published in 2024 by Peter Lang.

This is episode 43 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 the third episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with Manchán Magan. This episode is a recording of a public conversation which took place in Dublin on 4 February 2025.

Manchán Magan has written books on his travels in Africa, India and South America. He writes occasionally for The Irish Times, and presents the Almanac of Ireland podcast for RTÉ. He has made dozens of documentaries on issues of world culture for TG4, RTÉ, & Travel Channel. His books include Thirty-Two Words For Field, Listen to the Land Speak, Tree Dogs, Banshee Fingers and Other Words For Nature, and Wolf-Men and Water Hounds. With Antic-Ham, he’s collaborated on two art books for Redfoxpress. www.manchan.com

In this episode he discusses his identity and background as well as his work.

Read more about this public event: https://www.ria.ie/blog/you-need-to-walk-the-land-to-feel-the-stories/

About the Series

This is episode 3 of the My Identity podcast series 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 and production by Dr Susie Deedigan. Audio design and editing by Conor Patterson and Morgan Blain-Crehan, The Spinner’s Mill, Belfast.

A Walnut Wound is set in July 1795. A young girl is brought to the Grangegorman House of Industry when her family becomes homeless following their eviction.

This is the third episode of the Flighty Creatures trilogy of short stories for podcast by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Inspired by women who dwelt in the Grangegorman Asylum, Penitentiary and Workhouse, these stories are set in the 18th and 19th centuries. Listen back to episode one, The Holding Room, which follows Asylum Attendant Muriel Hill facing a quandary when her patient refuses to have her image captured by the asylum photographer. Episode two, By the Spider's Bed, tells the story of an older inmate of the Women’s Penitentiary, awaiting transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.

Flighty Creatures is a project of Grangegorman Histories' ⁠public call⁠.

Find out more about Grangegorman Histories on grangegormanhistories.ie

Illustration by Fidelma Slattery.

Held on 21 January 2025, and jointly organised by the Royal Irish Academy and the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, this seminar looked to add impetus to the implementation of the national policy approach being advanced by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.

In this month’s ARINS podcast, Professor Brendan O’Leary (UPenn), Professor John McGarry (QUB), Dr Dawn Walsh (UCD) and Dr James Pow (QUB) together with host Rory Montgomery MRIA discuss the recently published results of surveys conducted in 2024. The discussion covers opinions on membership of NATO and the Commonwealth, attitudes towards immigration, the role of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and emotional responses to potential constitutional change.

More information on the surveys, including links to all recent publications and booking links for upcoming public discussions (Dublin 10 March, Belfast 13 March) can be found here: https://www.ria.ie/research-programmes/arins/arins-the-irish-times-north-and-south-surveys-2024-results/

By the Spider's Bed is the story of an older inmate of the Women’s Penitentiary, awaiting transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.

This is the second episode of the Flighty Creatures trilogy of short stories for podcast by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Inspired by women who dwelt in the Grangegorman Asylum, Penitentiary and Workhouse, these stories are set in the 18th and 19th centuries. Listen back to episode one, The Holding Room, which follows Asylum Attendant Muriel Hill facing a quandary when her patient refuses to have her image captured by the asylum photographer.

Flighty Creatures is a project of Grangegorman Histories' ⁠public call⁠.

Find out more about Grangegorman Histories on grangegormanhistories.ie

Illustration by Fidelma Slattery.

The Holding Room follows Attendant Muriel Hill, facing a quandary when her patient refuses to have her image captured by the asylum photographer.

This is the first episode of the Flighty Creatures trilogy of short stories for podcast by Wexford-based writer, Sylvia Cullen. Inspired by women who dwelt in the Grangegorman Asylum, Penitentiary and Workhouse, these stories are set in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Flighty Creatures is a project of Grangegorman Histories' ⁠public call⁠. 

Find out more about Grangegorman Histories on grangegormanhistories.ie

Illustration by Fidelma Slattery.

In the second episode of ‘My Identity’ Professor Colin Graham (Maynooth) is in conversation with NI Justice Minister and Leader of the Alliance Party, Naomi Long MLA. This episode is a recording of a public conversation which took place in Dublin on 6 December 2024.

A lifelong resident of East Belfast, and politically active since her early twenties, Naomi first joined Belfast City Council as an Alliance Party councillor in 2001. She was subsequently elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as MLA for East Belfast in 2003. After having the honour of serving as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2009 to 2010, she became the first Alliance MP elected to Westminster, as Member of Parliament for East Belfast in 2010, unseating the then First Minister, Peter Robinson. In May 2016, Naomi returned to the Northern Ireland Assembly as MLA for East Belfast, before becoming Leader of Alliance that October. Since then, she has presided over the most successful elections in Alliance’s history. Naomi is the current Justice Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive.

In this episode she discusses, among other things, her upbringing, her faith and her career journey.

The recording of the event can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXiqr9KX34s

Read more about the event here: https://www.ria.ie/blog/the-long-view-identity-is-a-fluke-of-where-you-were-born/ This is episode 2 of the My Identity podcast series 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 and production by Dr Susie Deedigan. Audio design and editing by The Spinning Mill, Belfast.

The Asylum Workshop: a performers perspective is the fourth in the Grangegorman Histories podcast series exploring the histories of the Grangegorman area of north, inner-city Dublin.

Evie O’Brien is an actor and performer. As a drama student at the Grangegorman campus of TU Dublin. Evie played a central role in the Asylum Workshop play, a documentary-drama written by playwright Colin Murphy, directed by Peter McDermott and performed by final year TU Dublin students in June 2023, supported by Grangegorman Histories.

In this short podcast, Evie shares her experience of how engaging with the play shaped her understanding of the history of the Grangegorman site as a one of the first TU Dublin students to move on to the site. She reflects on how mental health has been viewed in Ireland in the past, and how the physical buildings on Grangegorman serves as a reminder of the importance of dismantling the stigma that surrounds mental health in the future.

In this month’s ARINS podcast, Dr Ida Milne and Dr Ian d’Alton, with host Rory Montgomery, discuss the lives of Southern Irish Protestants, including their own experiences. The conversation focuses on their 2019 co-edited collection of essays, Protestant and Irish: The minority’s search for place in independent Ireland, https://bit.ly/3Cous3i and Ian d’Alton’s 2024, Southern Irish Protestants: Histories, Lives and Literatures.

Reviewed recently in the Irish Times: https://bit.ly/3EqdrX2.

This is episode 41 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.