Author Archive
October 20, 2011
Anybody seeking an answer to the question posed above could do worse than to check out the podcasts now available from the Tudor-Stuart Ireland Conference held last month at University College Dublin.
They are available here.
- Map of Ireland from 1592 by Abraham Ortelius (Wikimedia Commons)
This two-day event brought together a large number of Irish history scholars, from the postgraduate to the professor. Judging from the number of speakers and the attendance levels, the organisers were right to assume that there was a need for such a conference, and plans are already afoot for a further instalment next year.
(more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, British History, Early modern Ireland, European History, History Compass Exchanges, Ireland, Natives and newcomers, Tudor-Stuart Ireland
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Conferences, Europe, Podcast | Leave a Comment »
June 24, 2011
The Department of English at the University of Freiburg recently hosted a travelling exhibition on the Life and Works of William Butler Yeats. This is an offshoot from the award-winning Yeats exhibition at the National Library of Ireland. My trips to the NLI are usually in pursuit of a manuscript, a microfilm or a rare book, so I had not previously gotten around to paying visit. Having studied his work in a final year undergraduate course, having visited his grave in Drumcliff, having seen the statue in Sligo (demolished by a drunken driver in 2005, but since repaired), and having attended a ‘master class’ by Terry Eagleton on the poem Easter 1916, perhaps I felt I had had enough of Yeats. Still, when the Irish ambassador to Germany showed up around the corner from my office to launch the exhibition, I thought I had better take a look.
- William Butler Yeats by John Butler Yeats (1900) (Wikimedia Commons)
The highlight of this occasion was the lecture on Yeats given by His Excellency Ambassador Dan Mulhall to a room packed full of university staff and students. Mulhall has both researched and taught extensively on the period during which Yeats lived. His extensive knowledge of his subject and his experience in giving poetry readings duly lent assuredness and clarity to what he had to say.
(more…)
Tags:Dan Mulhall, Easter 1916, History Compass Exchanges, Ireland, Irish Poetry, Life and Works of W.B. Yeats, Popular Culture, W.B. Yeats, writing
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Conferences, General | Leave a Comment »
April 8, 2011
The conference ‘Breaking up time: setting the borders between the past, the present and the future’ is currently ongoing at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. It has been a real privilege to attend this event, which has brought together historians, philosophers and others from all over the world to speak on a diverse range of topics focused around the issue of time.
The papers presented are of the sorts that really force the historian to think and rethink about what exactly s/he is doing when doing history, and that can only be a positive thing. As Professor Jörn Leonhard noted at the opening of the proceedings, the existence of historical time is perhaps the one thing all historians agree upon. Yet, at the same time, they rarely historicize time.
Freiburg Münster (Wikimedia Commons)
The keynote lecture on ‘Globalization and Time’ was presented last night by Professor Lynn Hunt of UCLA. It is possible to draw attention here only to some of what Professor Hunt had to say. (more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, conference, education, European History, globalization, historical research, historiography, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, history of science, humanities, methodology, World History, writing
Posted in Conferences, Europe, General, North America, World | 2 Comments »
March 24, 2011
A fifty-minute radio programme which mentions Hiroshima, antichrist, massacres, war criminals, Afghanistan, 9/11, ethnic cleansing, Nagasaki, enslavement, bigotry, racism, military dictators, lunacy, zealousness and Adolf Hitler ought perhaps to be of interest to a wide audience. In this case, the subject was Oliver Cromwell, a name which on its own is sufficient to attract considerable attention in Ireland.
Radio history, like television history, is difficult to get right and is rarely satisfactory for the specialist. But specialists need to remember that these programmes are not particularly designed for them, and that for the duration they ought perhaps to exchange their shoes or shades for those worn by the ‘ordinary’ public.
Oliver Cromwell (Wikimedia Commons)
Dr Patrick Geoghegan’s Talking History on Newstalk is one of several history-focused programmes regularly broadcast nationwide in Ireland. Topics of discussion in recent weeks have included the Battle of Waterloo, Mark Anthony, the American Civil War and George Bernard Shaw. On 14 March, the programme took the form of a debate about Cromwell in Ireland, focusing on his nine-month campaign in Ireland in 1649-50 and its legacy.
(more…)
Tags:British History, History Compass Exchanges, humanities, Ireland, oliver cromwell, radio history, talking history
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Europe, General, Podcast | Leave a Comment »
February 25, 2011
With the German winter semester drawing to a close, the members of the Graduiertenkolleg Freunde, Gönner, Getreue (Friends, Patrons, Clients) gathered last weekend in the village of Altglashütten along with some guests. The topic of the weekend was ‘Methodological approaches to friendship and patronage’, with the main attention being focused on discourse analysis and network analysis. The variety in the weather (overcast on Friday, sunny on Saturday and a blizzard on Sunday) was matched by the diversity of approaches and perspectives at what proved to be a very worthwhile event.
A snowy Sunday at Altglasshütten (image by author)
The key ingredient here was time.
(more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, European History, Friendship, globalization, Graduate School, historical research, History Compass Exchanges, Interdisciplinary, methodology, Patronage, philosophy, Popular Culture, Postgraduates, social sciences, technology, University of Freiburg, World History
Posted in Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference, Conferences, Europe, General, North America, Online Resources, World | Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2011
As I write, I can hear voices coming through the wall. In the coffee room, two postgraduates from the Freunde, Gönner, Getreue Research Group are passionately discussing their work.
In recent months, I have been fortunate to occupy an office within the research space which is home to Graduiertenkolleg 1288, Friends, Patrons, Clients, at the University of Freiburg. The work of this interdisciplinary PhD group, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, is focused on the ‘practice and semantics of friendship and patronage in historical, anthropological and cross-cultural perspectives’. Within these broad parameters, there is a great deal of varied and exciting work happening. Students sitting side by side investigate issues as far apart, chronologically at least, as ‘Revenge as social practice in Archaic and Classical Greece’ and ‘The Internet and Egyptian concepts of friendship in transition’. If those topics don’t appeal to you, how about the Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand, Seneca, Qing-China, or the punk and hardcore-scene in Buenos Aires? (more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, China, European History, Graduate School, historical research, History Compass Exchanges, Interdisciplinary, methodology, World History
Posted in Asia, Australasia and Pacific, Europe, General, Latin America and Caribbean, World | Leave a Comment »
November 25, 2010
These are strange times for Ireland, as it makes front pages across the globe and grabs the spotlight on international news channels. Meanwhile, an exhibition entitled ‘Ireland in Turmoil’ will run until April at the Long Room of the Trinity College Library in Dublin. Yet the crisis referred to in the latter instance is not the current mess we find ourselves in, but the 1641 rebellion. A visit to http://1641.tcd.ie/ reminds us that turmoil and Ireland are old and intimate acquaintances. (more…)
Tags:archives, British History, database, digital humanities, digitization, historical research, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, humanities, Ireland, publishing, technology
Posted in Britain and Ireland, digital humanities, Europe, General, Online Resources, World | Leave a Comment »
September 16, 2010
It’s that time of year. Shellen Xiao Wu posted here recently regarding her experience of ‘Transitioning from Student to Teacher’, while Justin Bengry has told us ‘It’s a Post-Doc Life’ in Saskatchewan. I’m happy to see fellow News Editors taking steps forward in their careers, and I am glad to report that it’s a post-doc life for me too.
Within the next few days, I will find myself at a new university in a new city; Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, to be precise. Naturally, therefore, Shellen’s and Justin’s reflections are of particular interest to me. Justin’s point about the need to ‘hit the ground running’ is, I think, crucially important. Although post-docs are not quite in the position of ‘higher authority’ that Shellen now luckily finds herself in, it is most definitely a situation very different from the early stages of graduate study. There is an immediate expectation that we will give seminar presentations and produce publications, and rightly so. Embracing these early challenges can help to ensure that we do hit the ground running, and help to make us aware of the extent to which the ground itself is, perhaps, moving too.
Homer and Aristotle at Uni Freiburg (Wikimedia Commons)
(more…)
Tags:European History, funding, History Compass Exchanges, IRCHSS, Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, University of Freiburg, writing
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Europe, General | 3 Comments »
June 10, 2010
A week ago, a selection of Irish bloggers gathered in a sturdy old building once home to the Provost’s horse at Trinity College Dublin. I am glad to report that this Blogging the Humanities event, which I attended as a representative of History Compass Exchanges, proved most worthwhile. Credit is due to those responsible for this initiative, the team behind Pue’s Occurrences.
So, what do bloggers talk about when they get together? (more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, Blogging the Humanities, communication, digital humanities, historical research, History Compass, History Compass Exchanges, humanities, Ireland, methodology, Popular Culture, Popular History, publishing, Pue's Occurrences, Trinity College Dublin
Posted in Blogroll, Britain and Ireland, Conferences, digital humanities, General, Online Resources, World | 2 Comments »
May 28, 2010
Over the past decade, we have all been reminded of the importance of religion to culture and of its capacity to guide human action. This point was reiterated by Terry Eagleton in a lecture which I attended a few months back.
At the moment I am in the middle of drafting an article that deals with an aspect of religion in early modern Britain and Ireland. It is, of course, worthwhile for me to reflect on what I am doing and on the factors which might be shaping my interpretation. On the other hand, it may not be worthwhile for you to suffer exposure to my reflections. However, rather than risk losing my focus on the task at hand by writing about something else, I would like to do some thinking out loud, so to speak. Read on if you will. (more…)
Tags:British History, European History, historiography, history, Ireland, religion
Posted in Britain and Ireland, General, World | 2 Comments »
May 13, 2010
It is a commonplace that Barack Obama’s use of the internet and new technology gave his presidential campaign an important edge over that of his rival John McCain, in terms both of reaching voters and of raising money. In the last few weeks we have again seen this technology in action in the politics surrounding the general election in the United Kingdom. In truth, the blanket news coverage, the instant updates on events, the slick graphics, the tweets, and the blogs can be highly addictive. I think that this was particularly the case in the short and swift British campaign; the American presidential campaign seemed to go on forever and following it closely throughout demanded a remarkable level of stamina. The American example also lacked the high drama which followed the election results in Britain, as the leading parties entered unfamiliar and uncertain negotiations to form a ‘strong and stable’ government.
10 Downing Street (Wikimedia Commons)
As this storm of media coverage now begins to die down following the exchange of vows between Clegg and Cameron in the leafy surrounds of the latter’s new back garden, I am left wondering about the challenges that will face historians in the future as they set about studying such episodes. (more…)
Tags:Britain, British History, Cameron, Clegg, communication, election 2010, historical research, history, new media, politics, Popular Culture, Scotland
Posted in Britain and Ireland, General, Online Resources | 2 Comments »
April 29, 2010
I’ve done a little searching to check how many blogs there are out there in the blogosphere, but I haven’t found any figures. How many history blogs are there? How much thought do bloggers give to their posts? What exactly is that we are doing, or supposed to be doing? Does it matter very much in any case?
Some of these questions, and presumably many others of interest, will be up for discussion at the upcoming symposium, ‘Blogging the Humanities: Arts, Culture, Heritage and the Humanities Online’. (more…)
Tags:Academic Conference, conference, digital humanities, history, Interdisciplinary, Ireland, Popular History, technology
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Conferences, General, Online Resources | 2 Comments »
April 15, 2010
Who is the greatest? Over the past decade, efforts have been made in a number of countries to answer this question.
Winston Churchill (Wikimedia Commons)
Such campaigns began in earnest in 2002, when Winston Churchill was selected as the Greatest Briton. In 2004, Canadians selected Tommy Douglas, followed shortly afterwards in 2005 by the USA, where Ronald Reagan came out on top. Also in 2005, Le Plus Grande Français was revealed as Charles De Gaulle. Matters were a little more complicated in Belgium, where different TV channels ran separate polls, Le Plus Grand Belge and De Grootste Belg. Unsurprisingly, the leading names on the resulting lists diverged considerably. (more…)
Tags:BBC, Britain, Churchill, Cromwell, De gaulle, Douglas, Greatest Britons, history, Ireland, Ireland's Greatest, ITV, Popular Culture, Popular History, Pue's Occurences, Reagan, RTE
Posted in Britain and Ireland, General, World | 1 Comment »
March 18, 2010
Strictly speaking, this post should perhaps have appeared on 17 March, but given the current endeavour in Ireland to turn Saint Patrick’s Day into a six or nine-day festival, I can perhaps be forgiven for bringing up this subject on 18 March.
As a child, I learned about a Patrick who was essentially a green-clad snake-banishing crozier-wielding superhero who visited every corner of the land and rapidly converted the Irish to Christianity. Numerous holy wells which he allegedly visited bear his name and peculiar hollows in rocks are designated as marks made by his knees or his feet. Close to my home, so the story goes, he stopped to rest by a well and decided that the spot would be a suitable place to build a church. However, after a red-haired woman came by and ignored the reclining saint in her midst, he quickly changed his mind. (more…)
Tags:17 March, British History, Christianity, history, Ireland, Irish, Northern Ireland, Parades, Popular Culture, Saint Patrick, Scotland
Posted in Britain and Ireland, Europe, General, World | Leave a Comment »
March 4, 2010
In 2010, how important is it for postgraduates to gain teaching experience in the course of the Ph.D. research? In some respects, the relevance of this question depends on what the individual plans to do after graduation. However, for the many students who decide to pursue doctoral research in the hope of eventually securing a post in university education, the answer well worth knowing.
By the way, I do not have the answer. (more…)
Tags:education, historical research, history, history careers, humanities, Ireland, Postgraduates, Research funding, Teaching experience
Posted in Britain and Ireland, General, World | 1 Comment »
