Recorded December 5th, 2024.

A hybrid seminar by Dr Lorraine Grimes (Maynooth University) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series.

Bio:

Lorraine Grimes is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Applied Social Studies at Maynooth University. Lorraine has a PhD from the National University of Ireland Galway. Her thesis is forthcoming in the form of a monograph with Bloomsbury Academic in 2025 titled ‘Single mothers in Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, migration and institutionalisation’. Lorraine previously worked with the Digital Repository of Ireland on the Archiving Reproductive Health project which is the subject of this talk.

Abstract:

Archiving Reproductive Health (ARH) is a Wellcome-funded project coordinated by the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), working to preserve digital material created by grassroots organisations working for reproductive justice in Ireland, especially during the 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Irish constitution.

The project was the first in the world to archive Facebook social media posts. A key part of the project was the archiving of stories posted on a Facebook page called “In Her Shoes”, where people anonymously shared their experiences of being refused abortion care, having to travel or illegally order pills online, and the emotional impact of these experiences. These stories often contained details of traumatic experiences such as sexual assault, obstetric violence and domestic abuse.

This talk will introduce the Archiving Reproductive Health Project and archiving sensitive social media material. We will talk about anonymization procedures, coding/cataloguing and developing a self-care protocol and an ethics protocol for the project.

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded December 11, 2024.

As humanitarian crises play out across our devices and screens, our latest ‘Behind the Headlines’ panel will explore the changing mandate for humanitarianism. Bringing together world experts, including our academic partners at Boston College, we ask: what is a humanitarian mission, and how has it evolved in view of past and current global conflicts, climate catastrophe, or the shifting terms of refugee and migrant rights? And, what is the role and reach of the university in responding to the challenge of restoring social trust in humanitarian initiatives?

Speakers and topics:

Religious humanitarianism during the World Wars

Patrick J. Houlihan, Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century European History, TCD, will look to the past and at the legacies of faith-based humanitarianism during the World Wars, 1914-1945, to provide a lens through which to view modern global humanitarianism.

The moral crisis of equality law

Shreya Atrey, Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law, University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub will ask why human rights lawyers can't seem to address rising global inequality.

Social Trust and the University

James F. Keenan, S.J., Vice Provost for Global Engagement & Canisius Professor, Theology Department, Boston College.

Erik Owens, Director, International Studies Program; Professor of the Practice, Theology Department, Boston College.

In the face of criticisms that American universities, once key structures instilling social trust, are now too elite, Keenan and Owens will argue that the university has an obligation to restore social trust, in part by ensuring that its research and teaching cross disciplinary boundaries in the service to the world’s pressing problems.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Carlo Aldrovandi, Assistant Professor in Religions, Conflict and Peace Studies, TCD, will argue that humanitarian discourses and practices are being instrumentalised to facilitate the functional reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and the permanent displacement of its population.

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded December 3rd, 2024.

A lecture by Zoe Patterson and Chiara Mastronardo as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series.

This weeks seminar will cover two lectures: Shortcuts Across Sandymount Strand: Joycean Companion Texts and Abridgement and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: Art and Islandness in Sinéad Gleeson’s Hagstone.

English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series is a fortnightly meeting which has been integral to the School of English research community since the 1990s. The aim of the seminar series is to provide a relaxed and convivial atmosphere for staff and students to present their research to their peers. The series also welcomes distinguished guest lecturers from the academic community outside Trinity College to present on their work. It is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and engage with the diverse research taking place within the School. 

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 15, 2024.

My Lorenzo de’ Medici experience: The Restoration of Plautilla Nelli

William Johnson Art restoration and conservation graduate and Teaching Assistant to Dr Roberta Lapucci, Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence

“Technical Art History and Nelli”

Trisha Dalke Currently an MSc student in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage at the University of Amsterdam specialising in Technical Art History, with a focus on Plautilla Nelli, also a graduate of Dr Roberta Lapucci’s programme at the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 15, 2024.

“Restoring in Florence, tradition versus innovation”

Dr Roberta Lapucci Head of the Art Conservation Department, Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence. Internationally renowned for her conservation research and conservation practice connected to Caravaggio, her recent teaching projects have included a focus on the art of Plautilla Nelli.

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 15, 2024.

“The Founding of Ireland-Italy Projects” Dr Brenda Moore McCann and Jane Adams An outline of how the idea for Ireland-Italy Projects came about and what it hopes to achieve, plus an overview of activities in Italy connecting conservation and education, and, plans for future projects.

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded December 5th, 2024.

Rooney Writer Fellow Mark O’Connell (A Thread of Violence, 2023) in conversation with historian Maurice Casey (Hotel Lux, 2024) about writing across the academic/commercial publishing boundary.

Mark O’Connell is the author of A Thread of Violence, Notes from an Apocalypse, and To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. He lives in Dublin with his family.

Dr Maurice J. Casey is a Research Fellow in Queen’s University Belfast, where he is a postdoc on a project exploring histories of queer sexuality in Northern Ireland. An expert on the history of international communism, he studied English and History at TCD before completing his MPhil at Cambridge and his DPhil in Oxford. He also held a Fulbright scholarship at Stanford and was the Historian in Residence at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum. His first book Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals, which was based on his PhD thesis, was published by Footnote Press in August 2024.

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded December 5, 2025.

Trinity Long Room Hub Rooney Writer Fellow Mark O'Connell in conversation with Professor David Kenny (School of Law, TCD).

Mark O’Connell is the author of A Thread of Violence, Notes from an Apocalypse, and To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. 

Professor David Kenny is Professor in Law at the Law School, teaching and researching Irish and comparative constitutional law, conflict of laws, critical legal theory and law and literature. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Harvard Law School, and the Honourable Society of the King's Inns, and is an alumnus of the US State Department's Fulbright programme. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2021. Since June 2024, he has served as Head of the Law School.

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 26, 2024.

Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Professor Anthony Caleshu (University of Plymouth) in conversation with Professor Philip Coleman (School of English, TCD).

Bio

I wrote my PhD at National University of Ireland, Galway (on the American poet, James Tate), and began working at University of Plymouth in 2003. I became Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing in 2012. 

My chief interest is Contemporary Poetry. I've written 5 books of poetry and 3 books about poetry. I also write short fiction, and have recently completed a screenplay. Past writing publications include a novella as well. 

 

Critical interests include Creative Health. My current work is around the benefit of Community Assets (Arts & Cultural organisations) and Social Prescription to support those with common mental health symptoms. I was PI for the AHRC-funded 'Poets Respond to Covid-19' project (2020-2021). Our published project findings about the benefit of poetry to health and well-being during the pandemic were covered by over 200 media outlets around the world. 

All of my writing is research led and often stems from my wider interest in the creative arts and philosophy. My fifth and most recent book of poetry, Xenia etc. (Shearsman, 2023) aims to re-invigorate the ekphrastic tradition, spring-boarding from contemporary visual art into an exploration of the contemporary condition (exploring sexuality and gender in the paintings of Julie Curtiss, landscape and the environment in the work of Shara Hughes and Emma Webster, and race in the work of Henry Taylor). 

Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 26th, 2024.

The Trinity Long Room Hub is delighted to welcome author and columnist Fintan O'Toole to present the 2024 Edmund Burke Lecture, 'Terror and Self-Pity: The Reactionary Sublime', which is supported by a generous endowment in honour of Padraic Fallon by his family.

Fintan O'Toole is an author and columnist. His books include We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, he is a winner of the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize for political writing. He is also Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton University.

About the Annual Edmund Burke Lectures

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1748. As a student he founded what would later become the College Historical Society, the oldest student society in the world. Burke entered Parliament in 1765 and quickly became a champion for political emancipation. After 1789, he directed his attention to the French Revolution and its immediate ramifications for political stability in England. To mark the university’s deep and lasting connection, and to express the inspiration his life and work as a public intellectual offer to us, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute has instituted a prestigious annual Edmund Burke lecture, delivered by a leading public intellectual of our time on a topic that engages with the challenges facing us today.

One of Burke’s central and life-long concerns was what moral codes should underpin the social order, constrain the use of power and inform our behaviour as responsible citizens. This is as important today as it was in Burke’s time, and the Edmund Burke lectures will keep his manifold legacies alive by providing a prominent forum for contributing in his spirit to the wider discourse about what society we want to live in and what traditions, perspectives and values we need to draw on in the shaping of our future.

Learn more at www/tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub