Over seven episodes, Early Career Researchers Orlaith Darling, Conor Brennan, Lisa Doyle, Courtney Helen Grile, Tom Hedley, Lorraine McEvoy, and Eleanor Neil will bring their diverse research areas to a public audience under the unifying theme of ‘connection.’
Introducing the new season, the team references the past year in which it has “been easy to feel disconnected”, and their desire to “emphasise that which binds us together” in order to foster connection.
In the first episode ‘Narrating millennial disconnect’ which was launched on the 14th of October, Orlaith Darling speaks to writer Lucy Sweeney Byrne about her debut short story collection, Paris Syndrome (2019), and feelings of millennial disconnection in a globalised world. They also discuss the parallels between autofiction and internet culture, ‘virtue signalling’, and what it means to be a ‘millennial’ Irish women writer.
Lucy is a writer from Greystones whose work has been published in Banshee, Stinging Fly, Grist, The Dublin Review and 3AM Magazine, as well as other publications. Her debut collection of stories, Paris Syndrome was Banshee Press’s inaugural publication in 2019, and a second edition has recently been released. Her work has been shortlisted for numerous Irish and international awards, including the Dalkey Emerging Writer Award, the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Butler Literary Award, the Kate O’Brien Award, and the John McGahern Annual Book Prize.
Guiding the fascinating conversation is Orlaith Darling, a PhD candidate in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin and an early career researcher at the Trinity Long Room Hub. Her research, funded by the Irish Research Council, focuses on representations of neoliberalism in contemporary Irish women’s short fiction, and she is more generally interested in the relationship between dominant social hegemonies and literature.
Podcast:
TLRHub · TLRH | The Hublic Sphere | Narrating millennial disconnect with Lucy Sweeney Byrne
Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub commended the new team for their “enthusiasm and initiative in carrying on this podcast into a new season, with a stimulating new theme and the potential to engage with new audiences.”
Episode Two, which will be released in November, will look at some of the most pressing ethical issues in archaeology and how we connect, disconnect or reconnect to our past and the pasts of others. In this episode ‘Can archaeology be ethical? Posthumanism and our connection to the past,’ Eleanor Neil, a PhD candidate in the Classics Department at Trinity College Dublin speaks to Dr. Craig Cipolla of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Subsequent episodes will look at the impact of moving arts communities online; the relevance of the ancient world; the Museum of Childhood Ireland Project; how mathematical concepts have shaped or informed art and society; and community-led forms of climate action.
To find out more about Season 2 of the Hublic Sphere, visit bit.ly/hublicsphere and listen on Soundcloud, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.