Trinity Long Room Hub

Recorded March 21st 2025. The annual seminar for the CONUL Teaching and Learning Committee organised by Trinity Library and with a keynote by Dr. John Danaher (School of Law, University of Galway). Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded March 25th, 2025. A lecture by Dr James Wood (University of East Anglia) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. 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 March 14th, 2025. A lecture by Dr Sanjoy Som (NASA Ames Research Centre, USA) organised by Trinity's MPhil in Identities & Cultures of Europe and funded by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences. Come and listen to an astrobiologist working at NASA on how space exploration can reshape human identity in times of crisis. This event explores the relationship between space exploration and human identity in the context of the climate emergency, the new (commercial) space age and the highly unpredictable state of world politics. Dr Sanjoy Som, a scientist based at NASA's Ames Research Center (California, USA), will delve into this topic in a public lecture, reflecting on how enhanced awareness of the Earth's interconnections with biology and the human civilization it hosts, the vastness of space to which the Earth system belongs, and the depth in time that has led to the present moment can create a sense of identity that can be as strong as cultural identities. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded April 8th, 2025. A lecture by Dr Dilek Ozturk & Dr Elliott Mills (School of English, TCD) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. This weeks seminar will cover two lecture: Revisiting Brian Friel: Space, Place, and Text & ‘I always make a point of following the works of Mr Eliot': T.S. Eliot in Flann O'Brien's Undecidable Modernism. 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 April 9th, 2025. A discussion between Prof Chris Morash (English) and Dr Mark O'Connell (Author and Rooney Writer Fellow, Trinity Long Room Hub) organised by the Library of Trinity College Dublin. Professor Chris Morash, Trinity's Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, and prize-winning author Dr Mark O'Connell discuss on the writing of John Banville. This event coincides with the inclusion of works from Banville's archive, housed in Trinity, in the current exhibition in the Old Library Long Room. On display in the exhibition is the manuscript draft of The Singularities (2022), which – differing from the published text - concludes with the line “at the last inscribe a full, and infinitely full, full stop.” Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded March 20th, 2025. Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Dr Nina Lamal (Huygens Instituut, KNAW, Netherlands) in conversation with Dr Ann-Marie Hansen (Fagel Collection Project Manager, Library, TCD). Bio: Dr Nina Lamal is an early modern historian based at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam. Her research focuses on early modern political history, diplomacy, the transnational histories of the book, and digital humanities. She studied early modern history at the KU Leuven. In 2014, she received her PhD from the KU Leuven and St Andrews University for her thesis on Italian news reports, political debates and historical writing on the Revolt in the Low Countries (1566-1648). Her book Italian Communication on the Revolt in the Low Countries was published with Brill in 2023. From 2015-2017, Lamal worked as postdoctoral research assistant at the Universal Short Title Catalogue project (university of St Andrews). In 2017, she moved to the university of Antwerp, after she had obtained a three-year individual postdoctoral fellowship of the Flemish Research Council. From 2020-2024, she was postdoctoral researcher on project Inventing Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe and editor of the of the correspondence of Christofforo Suriano, the first Venetian envoy in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. (https://suriano.huygens.knaw.nl/). Apart from the digital scholarly edition of Suriano's letters, her most recent publications include a co-written article with Helmer Helmers on Dutch diplomacy in the seventeenth century, two journal articles: one on foreign powers influencing the first Italian newspapers, and one the role of cross-border printing privileges in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. As a Trinity Long Room Hub Fellow, she will examine how the Fagel library functioned as a tool of statecraft from the Fagel regent family in the eighteenth century. Drawing on recent digitization and cataloguing projects, the proposed research use book historical methods to bring the library into dialogue with the Fagel Archives in The Hague and to study how it was used for political education, referencing and networking. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded March 11th, 2025. A lecture by Prof Jarlath Killeen (School of English, TCD) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. 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 March 11th, 2025. A lecture by Fergus Sheil (Founding Artistic Director of Irish National Opera) for the Music Composition Centre Talks. Fergus is the founding artistic director of Irish National Opera. He has conducted a wide-ranging repertoire of over 50 different operas in performance, recordings and on film. Highlights include Strauss' Salome, Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra, Rossini's William Tell and La Cenerentola, Brian Irvine and Netia Jones's Least Like The Other, Verdi's Aida, La traviata and Rigoletto as well as Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Before founding Irish National Opera in 2018, Fergus was Artistic Director of Wide Open Opera, which he founded in 2012 and Opera Theatre Company. He has produced opera in over 30 venues throughout Ireland as well as bringing productions to the UK (Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Opera House and The Barbican), USA, Holland, Luxembourg and Italy. As conductor, Fergus has worked with major orchestras and opera companies in Ireland as well as fulfilling engagements in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, UK, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Malta and Estonia. Fergus Sheil studied music at Trinity College, graduating in 1992. While at TCD he founded the Trinity Orchestra. He currently delivers a module in career development at TCD's Music Department and in 2023 he was awarded an honorary Doctor in Letters from TCD. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded February 25, 2025. A lecture by Alan Armstrong and Yael Bassan (School of English, TCD) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. This weeks seminar will cover two lectures: Hares Upon Hearthstones – Envisioning the Death of Civilization in Medieval Literature & Cognitive Reading of the Supernatural in Shakespeare's Plays. 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 February 22nd, 2025. A Keynote Address by Dr Miranda Corcoran (Chairs: Janice Deitner and Dara Downey, TCD),entitled “Lizzie in America: Transatlantic Transformations and the Figure of Elizabeth Style in Shirley Jackson's Fiction.” Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded 13th February 2025. A hybrid seminar by Prof Cathriona Russell (School of Religion, Theology and Peace Studies) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Healthcare faces comparable challenges to those of every other sector in society in the context of a changing climate. In relation to ongoing international agreements, healthcare will, for example, have to enact mitigation strategies for net-zero in its contributions to emissions, currently c.4.5% of global GHG emissions. More significantly however healthcare will need to design strategies for adaptation, aiming at resilience in ongoing provision and effectiveness in securing justice; resilience in the face of more extensive and more frequent temperature and precipitation extremes, sea level rise, changes in land-use and food production; and resilience in social conditions, in housing provision, in providing access to health care, in disease prevention, all while demographies continually shift (age and gender, poverty, and displacement)[1]. The expected continuing increase in intensity and frequency of adverse events will worsen health outcomes and health inequalities, which themselves are drivers of climate change. If healthcare contributes to the ‘good life' through its impact on health, then a key measure of its effectiveness will be its commitment to building capability e.g. for preventative medicine (A. Sen), and for ‘living with and for each other in just institutions' (P. Ricoeur). [1] IPCC, 2023 Summary for Policy Makers, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/ Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded February 13th, 2025. Pay Attention!: Literary Studies, Neurohumanities and the ‘Distraction Economy' Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Prof Ronan McDonald (University of Melbourne, Australia) in conversation with Prof Christopher Morash (School of English, TCD) and Prof Shane O'Mara (TCIN, TCD). ‘Attention studies' is burgeoning in academic and popular fora, not least because there is a common perception that we live in an era of digital distraction. Drawing on insights from neuroscience, this project considers the relationship between reading and attention in literary studies. It considers how reading orientates our mind, between various affective states that compel or distract: between willed concentration, raptured enchantment or receptive, wide-minded noticing. Opening up a cross-disciplinary conversation between literary studies, psychology and neuroscience,  it seeks to provide new purpose and direction for literary studies. ​​​​​​​ About Ronan McDonald: Ronan McDonald holds the Gerry Higgins Chair in Irish Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is widely published in Irish literary studies, with a particular interest in Irish modernism and Irish-Australian literature. He also has a research interest in the history of criticism and the value of the humanities. His books include Tragedy and Irish Literature (2002), The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett (2007) and The Death of the Critic (2008). Recent edited collections include The Values of Literary Studies: Critical Institutions, Scholarly Agendas (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Flann O'Brien and Modernism (2014). He is series editor of Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture. Current projects include an ARC Discovery Project with Prof Katherine Bode and Maggie Nolan, ‘Close Relations: Irishness in Australian Literature'. and a ARC Discovery Project, with Professor Simon During, on 'English: The History of a Discipline, 1920-70'. He is currently working on a book on ‘attention' in literary studies. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded January 16th, 2025. A hybrid seminar by Dr Tylor Brand (Near & Middle Eastern Studies, TCD) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Children were among the most vulnerable groups within the famine that struck Lebanon during World War I, which made them a special focus of humanitarian interventions during the wartime period. However, shifting social perceptions of poverty and vulnerability over the years of the famine altered how people who lived the crisis regarded children, and even the very concept of childhood. Based on memoirs, humanitarian reports, and contemporary accounts, I argue that as a "discourse among adults" (Maksudyan, 2014) childhood in the famine was conceptually fractured and redefined according to famine-specific biases. As a result, a child's identity and social standing made them either worthy of a protected childhood that shielded them from the realities of the famine, or of pity and often revulsion befitting their physical and social misery.  Speaker: Tylor Brand is assistant professor in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. He specializes in the history of crisis and famine in the Middle East, in particular the famine in Lebanon during World War I. His book, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon's Great War (Stanford University Press, 2023) examines the intimate effects of famine on the lives and the perceptions of those who endured the crisis in World War I Lebanon. Learn more at www/tcd/ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded 09 December 2024. Mohamed Jama, Chairperson National Disability Agency, Somalia A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Bulelani Mfaco, Spokesperson for the Movement of Asylum Seekers Ireland (MASI) A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Kavita Brahmbhatt, Senior Disability Advisor WFP A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Anne-Laure Duval, Deputy County Director WFP Cambodia Opening Remarks by Karen Williams, Irish Aid, Department of Foreign Affairs A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences. Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/" A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Pratima Gurung, General Secretary of Indigenous Persons with Disabilities Global Network A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Dr Caroline Jagoe, Associate Professor, Trinity College Dublin, Co-Founder of SADIE A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Claire O'Reilly Research Fellow Trinity College Dublin & Co-founder of SADIE A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Dr Brendan Ciaran Browne, Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Dr Mershen Pillay Associate Professor Massey University & UKZN South Africa A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded 09 December 2024. Emina Ćerimović, Associate Director Disability Rights Division, Human Rights Watch A symposium on food insecurities organised by the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences.  Funded in part by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/triss/people/SADIE/index.php and https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded November 27th, 2024. A lecture by the Hon. Sir Donnell Deeny, Pro-Chancellor TCD for the Centre for the Book Seminar Series. This year's Trinity Centre for the Book Seminar series brings together libraries, publishers, book collectors and activists to talk about their contribution to Ireland's contemporary book culture. They reflect on the importance of books, reading and the conservation of our print heritage. In this session, we hear from the Hon. Sir Donnell Deeny, Pro-Chancellor Trinity College Dublin. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

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

Recorded November 19, 2024. A lecture by Francis Leneghan (University of Oxford) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. The rich corpus of Old English biblical prose remains a missing chapter in the history of the translation of the Bible. This paper will explore how, centuries before the Reformation, Old English prose authors sought to make the sacred words of the Bible available to a wide range of readers, lay and clerical. From the reign of King Alfred (871–99), a partial prose translation of the Psalms survives as well as a free rendering of sections of Exodus and the Acts of the Apostles. By the end of the tenth century, all four gospels and the first seven books of the Old Testament were available in English prose. This widening of access to the Bible was not without its problems; in the eyes of monks such as Ælfric of Eynsham, a little biblical learning on the part of the laity could be a very dangerous thing. 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 7th, 2024. A hybrid seminar by Dr Brian Hurwitz (Emeritus Professor of Medicine and the Arts at the Centre for the Humanities and Health, King's College London) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Abstract: Medicine is strewn with anecdotes, brief, pointed accounts of human episodes, drawn from scattered zones of healthcare experience. Traditionally viewed as a short form medical discourse which encompasses case reports, aphorisms, witticisms and hybridised versions of such texts and utterances, some are artfully fashioned micro-narratives, others ‘twitchily alive' observations and dialogues. Frequently dismissed as epistemologically doubtful if not misleading frippery, he approaches anecdotes and the medically anecdotal as vernacular patient practices which support descriptive and moral insights into the sociality and power relations of medicine. An ‘unauthorised', unregulated idiom, which does not seek to isolate events and experiences from subjective thoughts and feelings about them, anecdotes express a standpoint epistemology that articulates healthcare circumstances in new light. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded November 18, 2024. Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Dr Shreya Atrey (Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford) in conversation with Prof Mark Bell (School of Law, TCD). Shreya Atrey is an Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and is based at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. She is an associate member of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, an Official Fellow and Racial Justice and Equality Fellow at Kellogg College, and a Senior Teaching Fellow at New College. Shreya is the Editor of the Human Rights Law Review (OUP). Previously, she was based at the University of Bristol Law School and has been a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and a Hauser Postdoctoral Global Fellow at the NYU School of Law, New York. She completed BCL with distinction and DPhil in Law on the Rhodes Scholarship from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Shreya works on equality and human rights issues in comparative and international law. Her first monograph, Intersectional Discrimination (OUP 2019) won the runner-up Peter Birks Book Prize in 2020. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded October 8th 2024. A lecture by Daria Moskvitina (Zaporizhzhia State Medical University) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. For Ukraine, Shakespeare is an iconic figure, a symbol of European culture and European values. This talk will try to give a systematic understanding of how the Ukrainian reception of Shakespeare was formed, and explain its peculiarities at the present stage of development. 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 https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded November 5th, 2024. A lecture by Ema Vyroubalová as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. The paper discusses how productions of Shakespeare's plays from East-Central Europe that transcend various geographical, national, and linguistic boundaries have influenced the theatrical-political discourse in this region from 1989 onwards. It focuses primarily on the work of four internationally-established directors: Andrei Şerban (Romania), Jan Klata (Poland),  David Jařab (Czech Republic),  and Matei Vișniec (Romania).  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 https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded October 3rd, 2024. A hybrid seminar by Dr Ghaiath MA Hussein (Assistant Professor in Medical Ethics and Law, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. This presentation examines how armed conflict reshapes the concept of self, particularly in the Global South. Drawing from his experiences as a medical doctor and his bioethics background, Dr Hussein will discuss the challenges to informed consent and individual autonomy in war. His journey began at the University of Toronto, where he learned that respect for autonomy and informed consent are vital to ethical practice. These principles informed her advocacy for bioethics in oppressed regions like Sudan. However, his views changed when she returned to Sudan for research on health ethics in conflict zones. Engaging with those affected by the Darfur war revealed a collective ethos of trust and interdependence, showing that community well-being often outweighs individual autonomy in crises. In this talk, he will outline her thesis research questions and how his understanding of informed consent shifted from an individualistic model to a trust-based framework. This new paradigm prioritizes mutual support and communal resilience in ethical research practices during prolonged conflicts. He will conclude by advocating for a trust-based consent model that complements and sometimes replaces traditional informed consent. This approach addresses the unique challenges of armed conflict and empowers individuals through solidarity and collective action, encouraging a reevaluation of ethical engagement with crisis-affected communities to enhance their agency and dignity. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Closing panel on Heavy Metal, from thrash to doom and beyond, with Philip Coleman (English), Richard Duckworth (Music), Eimear Rouine (Transition to Trinity), ft. Ron Davies (UCD) & Elizabeth Boyle (NUI Maynooth). Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Darryl Jones (English) assesses the enduring relevance of The Beatles, and Jonathan Hodgers (Music) introduces his new book about Bob Dylan and film. In conversation with James Denis McGlynn (Film). Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Balazs Apor (Trinity Centre for Resistance Studies) on the legacies of underground music in late-socialism, and the role of non-conformist songs in expressing dissident (and dissonant) voices. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Eoin O'Dell (Law) examines the fundamentals of copyright law and AI through recent high-profile music cases, involving Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, Robin Thicke, Olivia Rodrigo, and more. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. A Long Table event with novelist and screenwriter Eoin McNamee (Director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre) who will tackle the big question alongside Nick Johnson (Creative Arts) with contributions from Trinity colleagues including Neville Cox (Law), Jane Ohlmeyer (History), Shane O'Meara (Neuroscience), Kata Szita (Human+ Fellow), Jennifer Edmond (Digital Humanities), Jake Erickson (Religion), Clodagh Brook (Italian) and others from Trinity's interdisciplinary community. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Nicole Grimes (Music) explores expansive forms in women's compositions and considers the gaps in our knowledge of women in music from C19th to the present. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Trinity's expert Assyriologist Martin Worthington (Near & Middle Eastern Studies) shows extracts from his new film about the recovery of lost languages and introduces student participants in the project. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Patrick Houlihan (History) discusses his new book on humanitarianism between the World Wars and considers humanitarian motivations in this era. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Brendan Browne (Religion) shows a new documentary on the threatened Bedouin communities of the West Bank and talks about his role as Executive Producer . Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Trinity's Environmental History Network. Katja Bruisch, Tim Stott, Diogo de Carvalho Cabral and Francis Ludlow delve into the history of wild and wonderfully bad ideas about climate and nature including wetland reclamation, geoengineering and Spaceship Earth. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Hub former artist-in-residence Mairead McClean presents her film, made as Decade of Centenaries partner with the Beyond 2020 Virtual Record Treasury project. Includes discussion with Jennifer O'Meara (Film). Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/