Launching the festival on Monday 25th September, Provost Linda Doyle joined Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, for a customary Hub ‘coffee morning’ with many members of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities research community in attendance. The Provost, whose own research encompasses both engineering and the arts, spoke about the importance of parity of esteem between Arts Humanities disciplines and STEM subjects. She also emphasised the value of the creative arts in how they manage ambiguity and interrogate power structures.
Provost Linda Doyle and Professor Eve Patten (Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub)
These strengths came to the fore later that same day, as festivalgoers gathered in the Neill Lecture Theatre to hear from Professor Brian Singleton, School of Creative Arts, as he discussed the politics of contemporary urban theatre, and the deeply provocative works of ANU productions, described by one reviewer as the type of work that might be produced had David Lynch and James Joyce collaborated. Tracing his own experiences in this site-specific immersive form of theatre, Professor Singleton brought the audience on a virtual tour of Dublin, its history, the legacy of its institutions, its aesthetic, social and economic landscape.
Kicking off the lunchtime talks, Professor Chris Morash drew on powerful aerial imagery in his presentation on ‘Deep Time Encounters’ as he wove a fascinating story of how technology can shape our understanding of landscape across the Australian outback and deep into the heart of the west of Ireland. Speaking about the first wireless radio signal sent to Clifden in Connemara in the early 20th century by the Marconi company, Professor Morash evoked a sense of the scale of the structure situated in a rural bogland, with its domineering antenna network and adjoining electricity generation centre, powered by extensive peat digging. He asked the audience to imagine how, decades before the major rural electrification of Ireland, which still left many houses without power, the spark of the wires lit up its environs at night and the noise reverberated throughout the darkness.
The landscape and our connection to nature was a recurring theme throughout a number of the festival’s events. On Monday 25th, award-winning Trinity poets Dr Seán Hewitt and Dr Yairen Jerez Columbie’ and the Hub’s Rooney Writer Fellow Nidhi Zak gathered to discuss poetry and ‘writing nature’, with Nidhi also paying tribute to Seamus Heaney in her new poem ‘Incantation for the Hare’ (read here). On Tuesday 26th, researchers from Trinity’s Environmental Humanities came together for a roundtable discussion on ‘Rethinking the Archive in Urgent Times: Environmental Humanities and their Sources.’ On the same day, how the university situates itself in a world faced with ecological crisis was the topic of Professor Michael Cronin’s talk on ‘The Terrestrial University.’ Discussing the incentives to radically restructure faculties within universities around interdisciplinary approaches, Professor Cronin highlighted the need to reimagine a university of the future which is prepared to navigate the climate emergency and address our relationship with other beings.
Professor Eve Patten, Dr Yairen Jerez Columbie’ (School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies), Dr Seán Hewitt (School of English) and Rooney Writer Fellow Nidhi Zak
Why should murder and attempted murder be treated any differently under the law? This was just one of the many fascinating flash presentations delivered by PhD candidates across Trinity’s Arts and Humanities schools as part of the week’s ‘Thesis in Three’ instalments. How art memes change our understanding of copyright, the relationship between culture and dialect, language and gesture, the socio-historic experiences of adoptive parents in Ireland, and many more topics were discussed through these lively presentations. As one attendee commented, “it was really fun and engaging as well as promising to see the current research being carried out by PhD students.”
PhD candidate Sophie McGurk (Classics) presenting her research poster
A number of PhD candidates and staff also took to the booths in the Arts Building for the Festival’s ‘Booth Banter’, where they engaged with an even wider audience of passersby, students and staff. Volunteer researchers were on hand to provide information and draw people into the booths for more conversation. This proved to be a favourite with attendees. One visitor described the interactions with PhDs as “engaging, articulate informative, useful”. Here, major research projects were also presented, including Professor Christine Casey’s ERC-funded Craft Value project, and the Cuala Press Project by Dr Billy Shorthall, also of the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Soraya Afzali, Leda Tortora, and Anna Trimborn invited guests into the booth to discuss their research on the project NETHATE; Human+ fellow Dr Kata Szita tackled the question, “who am I in virtual reality?”; and Dr Orla Fitzpatrick engaged in conversations around the Hub-based ‘Ireland’s Border Cultures’ project.
Researchers from NETHATE at the Arts Building booths
Back at the Hub, Dr Fitzpatrick also showed imagery being curated as part of the Border Cultures Project, which provides insights into experiences of life around the border zone in Ireland. Joining her was former Beyond 2022 Artist in Residence Mairead McClean, who shared some of her work as a visual artist in trying to capture fragments of the salvaged records now encompassed within the new virtual record treasury. Later in the week, Jessica Baldwin (National Archives), Timothy Murtagh (PRONI), and Brian Gurrin (Census Specialist) came together to share some insights into the restoration of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland.
Archives and the hidden treasures of Trinity’s Library--now home to around 7 million volumes-- was the feature of Thursday’s presentation “Quick Picks: Favourites from Trinity Library’, where archivists and librarians shared manuscripts and collections e close to their own heart, from beautifully animated books in the Fagel Collection to handwritten drafts of a John Banville novel. This session was preceded by a fascinating discussion between Dr Rachel Moss (History of Art) with manuscript specialist Timothy O’Neill as they discussed the lettering and illustrations of the Book of Kells.
From Trinity’s School of Religion, Theology and Peace Studies, Dr Brendan Browne of Trinity’s Belfast campus presented a film ‘Interview with Dad’ from his research on forced displacement in Northern Ireland and his 2019 ‘Burn/T Out’ exhibition in Belfast. Later that evening (and also from the School of Religion, Theology and Peace Studies) Professor David Shepard joined Professors Michael Kirwan (Theology), Neville Cox (Law) and Ruth Karras (History) and Bridget Martin (UCD) to discuss violence and bloodguilt through the enduring biblical story of David and Goliath. And in another biblical engagement Dr Zohar Hadromi-Allouche spoke of the depiction of the biblical figure Sarah ‘From the Bible to the Beatles...’ and the revealing misrepresentation of her character in the Qur’an and modern Yiddish poetry.
Research volunteers providing festival information
In a similar vein, Professor Martin Worthington from Trinity’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies asked ‘What Secrets Does Writing Keep?’ as he reflected on the world’s first writing and how to decipher its messages. Joining him was Dr Anna McSweeney from Trinity’s History of Art, who spoke about medieval Arabic manuscripts of al-Andalus or Islamic Spain.
A number of events focused on the work of translation. In ‘Fascists at the Gate: The Strange Tale of Coriolanus in Irish’, Trinity’s 1867 Professor of English Andrew Murphy revealed the curious case of how Shakespeare’s work came to be appropriated for right-wing theatre in 1940s Ireland. On Tuesday 26th of September, Sebastian Barry was joined in discussion with his translators in a much-anticipated event organised by the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation to mark European Languages Day. Trinity’s Professor of German (1776) Jurgen Barkhoff spoke to his predecessor Professor Eda Sagarra for a festival conversation special. Looking at ‘what has changed?’, Professor Sagarra (Trinity’s first female College Officer) spoke about her life in academia, the challenges she faced because of her gender, and how to be an effective change-maker. Carmel O’Sullivan was also interested in looking at changes in the education system with her talk ‘Getting Creative in the Education System’, where she highlighted her research as Professor in Drama and Arts Education at the School of Education.
Looking at the role of religion, Trinity’s Professor of Ecumenics Linda Hogan gave a lunchtime talk on ‘Securing Human Rights in the Anthropocene’. With the continuing rise of those identifying along religious lines worldwide, she argued, religion should be an ally for the better implementation and realisation of human rights in an increasingly challenging socio-economic environment. Trinity Regius Professor of Law Mark Bell also discussed the role of religion in his talk on ‘The Ethics of Work’, where he discussed Catholic social teaching and labour law.
The Hub’s weekly coffee morning slot turned into a daily festival discussion with researchers of all career levels sharing their work, encompassing music and myth in literature, visual representations of research, fantasy authors, public engagement, speech processing and medical diagnosis, and gender identity throughout the ages. As one attendee of the festival noted, it was “amazing how so many ideas from different topics actually thread together.” The range of research was also on visual display in the lobby of the Trinity Long Room Hub, where members of Trinity’s Arts and Humanities community stopped to spot their book covers among the almost 300 represented publications from Trinity’s Arts and Humanities since 2018.
Professor Aileen Kavanagh (Law) and Professor Eve Patten
Throughout the week, Dr Scotty McQueen (School of Creative Arts) aka ‘Crazy Conspiracy Dude’ made a number of appearances, challenging conspiracy theories and their place in contemporary culture. He presented his doctoral research which aims to deconstruct some of the ideas and beliefs around conspiracy theories using creative arts practice.
Dr Scotty McQueen (School of Creative Arts)
Examining at the cultic veneration of leaders in Eastern Europe, Dr Balazs Apor, co-ordinator of Trinity’s Centre for Resistance studies, delved into the notion of ‘strongmen’ and the legacies of communism. He was joined by Dr John Murray (Russian & Slavonic Studies) who presented his visual artwork in representing images in the USSR’s print media, and shared his own experiences of living in the Soviet Union.
The intersections between AI and the creative arts were a key theme on Thursday and Friday, with Professor Jennifer Edmond (Digital Humanities) and Hub public engagement fellow Laura Allcorn going behind the scenes of their recent Dublin Fringe Festival quiz show, ‘Who Wants to Write and Email?’ AI Musicologist Dr Martin Clancy joined the Democracy Forum’s Dr Ellie Payne and Mark Little for a wide-ranging talk on AI and music, copyright, creativity, and much, much more. Professor Lorraine Leeson, Trinity’s Vice-Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, gave us an in-depth look at Irish Sign Language as she spoke about new research in deaf studies, including the use of machine translation between sign language and spoken languages.
A History of the Future conversation with Dr Martin Clancy, Dr Ellie Payne and Mark Little
Exploring some of the big questions in technology and creativity, researchers from Trinity’s School of Creative Arts (Dr Jennifer O’Meara, Dr Neill O’Dwyer and Dr Nicholas Johnson) spoke with Caoimhe Wandel-Brannigan (the PIX-ART project) and anyone in the room who wanted to join the Festival’s ‘Long Table’ e and get involved in the discussion. Attendees were presented with specific guidelines on etiquette for this ‘performance of a dinner-party conversation’, including the warning that ‘at 3:15pm, there will be an end, but no conclusion.’
Sticking with the Creative Arts, a screening of the opera ‘Old Ghosts’ took place in Trinity’s Arts Building on Thursday evening 28th of September, followed by a discussion with Trinity composer Dr Evangelia Rigaki (Music) and librettist Marina Carr, chaired by Dr Melissa Sihra (Drama). The Opera, which is available to view online, was a first-time collaboration between Irish National Opera and ANU theatre and imagines a scene in the lives of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle in Trieste. Joyce also featured when School of English scholars Professor Sam Slote and Darryl Jones came together for a very enjoyable reflection on why we need footnotes and scholarly annotations. Professor Slote has co-edited six volumes on Joyce and his most recent publication is the magisterial Annotations to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ (Oxford UP, 2022), co-written with Marc Mamigonian and John Turner.
Professor Sam Slote and Professor Darryl Jones (School of English)
When did the child first start appearing in literature? This was the focus of Professor Aileen Douglas’ lunchtime lecture on ‘The Child in English Fiction, 1740-1825', and later in the week exciting new research directions for children’s literature was the theme of a discussion chaired by Dr Padraic White of the School of English.
The Festival was supported by the Faculty of AHSS and also by START: European Researcher’s Night, which was held on Friday 29th and featured a number of Arts and Humanities talks and discussions in front square and at other locations around campus, including ‘Arts-based methods in qualitative research: A performative launch of the Sorgente report’, a project to support newly-arrived refugees in learning English, a talk by Professor Issam Nassar (Doha Institute) on the ‘Biblification of Palestine in Photography: Representation, Colonialism, and Decolonization’, a Shakespeare performance in Irish Sign Language for people and machines, interactive sessions with Trinity’s Centre for the Book and the library, and ‘a postcards from the future’ initiative with the Critical ChangeLab project.
The Arts and Humanities Festival drew to a close on European Researcher’s Night when history and archival sources were in the spotlight with a number of research presentations: Claire Poynton-Smith (School of English) and fellow researchers revealed exciting new approaches to some of the oldest medieval sources and highlighted what sparked their interest in the medieval period while also dispelling a few myths along the way; and Jane Ohlmeyer, Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History (1792) brought festivalgoers back to the early modern period with a provocative question, ‘Did Ireland have an Empire?’ Here she spoke of Ireland’s complicated role in empire, including its involvement in the slave trade. Finally, a sold-out event on the brewing of early modern beer showcased Professor Susan Flavin’s research as part of the ERC-funded FoodCult Project on food, drink & culture in Ireland. Revealing some surprising findings on just how much beer workers drank in 1574 and the now proven strength of the alcohol of the time, Professor Susan Flavin’s documentary tracked her research journey and at the end of an inspiring week all that remained was for attendees to form an orderly queue and sample a beer from Irish heritage grains by Maurice Deasy.
Until next time...
Listen to up to 15 tracks from the festival here:
Related links: