Exploring the experience of Irish Protestants through the medium of narrative

For further information, contact Tony Walsh, Department Adult and Community Education, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. Tel. +353 1 708 3951, email tony.walsh@nuim.ie

 ‘Irish Religious History: Catholic, Protestant and Beyond?’  Conference, 6-7 September 2013

Following its very successful inaugural conference on the topic ‘Shaping Identities: an Historical and Cultural Exploration of Irish Protestantism’ (June 2012), the Centre is pleased to announce that the 2013 conference will be held in NUI Maynooth on 6-7 September 2013, on the theme of ‘Irish Religious History: Catholic, Protestant and Beyond?’

The purpose of the conference is to explore how the ways in which we study and have studied the religious history of Ireland have impacted and continue to impact on experiences of identity and culture. We are interested in exploring this important area with a view to promoting increased understanding and reconciliation between the contested traditions in the country. This becomes particularly significant as we enter the current ‘decade of commemoration’.

In its aim to interrogate our perceptions of self and ‘other’ and how these have been constructed over time through various historical and social discourses, this conference will appeal to academics and students from a wide variety of disciplines, members of community organisations involved in reconciliation, Irish minority groups, members of government working groups, and the general public.

Format of the conference

The conference will take place over two days.  In promoting an understanding of the reciprocal influence of contested histories on culture, identity and experience, a variety of modes of presentation will be deployed, including:

Papers on such on topics such as

• historiography – on the writing and theory of Irish religious history over the past 1500 years;
• public histories and commemoration – how what historians write is understood by non-specialist readers and impacts upon the public sphere;
• disinterring the reciprocal links between history, knowledge, identity and reconciliation as a bridge to better understanding of different traditions;
• promoting reflection, reflexivity, and the critical interrogation of the nature of Ireland’s contested traditions.

Panel discussions

• Structured audience discussion drawing on the experiences of participants
• Active participation in structured role play / experiential learning.

The conference will feature an exhibition of scriptural texts, Catholic and Protestant, courtesy of NUIM Russell Library, and a report on an ‘In Classroom’ project involving secondary school children’s interpretation of selected depositions of 1641 (http://1641.tcd.ie)

Some twenty established scholars from Ireland, Europe, and North America have already accepted invitations to speak.  For further information, contact Professor Jacqueline Hill, Department of History, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. Tel. +353 1 708 3759/3729 or email Jacqueline.Hill@nuim.ie.

The Centre for the Study of Irish Protestantism hosted a visit from the Moderator of the Irish Presbyterian Church, Revd Dr Roy Patton on the 12 March 2013. History was made as this was the first ever visit of a Moderator to the University and coincides with the 400th anniversary of the establishment of Presbyterianism in Ireland! While at Maynooth the Moderator also visited members of the NUIM/Defence Forces Partnership at Baldonnell.

Later in the evening the Kenndy Institute joined with CSIP in facilitating a Colloquium entitled the Role of the Churches in Reconciliation in Ireland. Speakers included the President of NUIM Dr Phillip Nolan,  Dr Patton, Prof Gladys Ganiel of the Irish School of Ecumenics, Belfast and Dr Trevor Morrow of Lucan Presbyterian Church.
Prof Ganiel’s paper, entitled ‘Reconciliation and the Churches: Challenges and Opportunities’ presented findings from a recent research project on attitudes towards and understandings of reconcilaition among church members in Ireland. Dr Morrow’s paper explored the influence of the Ulster Covenenat on Irish Protestant identiy both North and South of the Border.

Prof Jim Walsh, Vice President; the President Dr Phillip Nolan; the Moderator Dr Roy Patton and Tony Walsh, Director of the CSIP

Brig Genl Paul Fry; Tony Walsh and Msgr Hugh Connolly, President of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

The Colloquium presenters and chairpersons with the President.

Prof Gladys Ganiel is Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at the Irish School of Ecumenics. Her primary research interests are religion and conflict, Northern Ireland politics, evangelicalism, congregational studies, qualitative research methods, and religion and transition in South Africa and Zimbabwe. She has authored or co-authored a number of books including Evangelicalism and Conflict in Northern Ireland,  Evangelical Journeys: Choice and Change in a Northern Irish Religious Subculture, and has also published articles on religion, conflict and reconciliation in journals such as Journal of Peace Research, Democratization, Sociology of Religion, Irish Political Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and Journal of Religion in Africa. She serves on the editorial board of the Africa Peace and Conflict Network and is on the Board of the European Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion

 Dr Trevor Morrow  Originally form Northern Ireland, theologian and historian, Dr Trevor Morrow has been minister of the dramatically growing Lucan Presbyterian Church, Co Dublin for the last twenty-eight years. In 2001 he was elected as the youngest ever Moderator of Irish Presbyterianism. With a long standing commitment to reconciliation in both Northern   Ireland and the Republic, he is a much sought after speaker at both academic and church conferences in Ireland and internationally. His interests include the influences of history and culture in the formation of identity, the shaping of reformed culture in the twenty-first century and the dynamics of church growth.

Tony Walsh, a lecturer in the Department of Adult and Community Education at NUI Maynooth, is the Academic Co-ordinator of the MA(LMDS), a member of the Military Academic Board which oversees the Defence Forces/NUI Maynooth partnership, and of the MA(LMDS) Steering Committee. He is also Co-Director of the Centre for Transformative Narrative Research and Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Irish Protestantism at the University. Originally trained as a systemic-constructivist psychotherapist, he has been involved in editing and contributing to a number of books on cultural integration, postpositivist research, radical adult education, and suicide.

Dr. Miriam Moffitt studied Local History at NUIM and Church History at the University of Wales, Lampeter and at the University of Nottingham. She held an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship from 2003 to 2006, and completed her PhD, ‘The Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, 1848-1950’ in the Department of History, NUIM under the supervision of Dr Jacinta Prunty. From 2008 to 2010 she held an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of History, NUIM, when she studied the experiences of the loyalist population of Connaught from 1912 to 1928. She has taught in the Department of History, NUIM and presently teaches Church History in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra.

Publications

Books

Clanricarde’s Planters: land agitation in east Galway (Dublin: Maynooth Series in Local History, Four Courts Press, 2011)

The Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics, 1846-1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010)

Soupers and Jumpers Protestant missions in Connemara (Dublin: Nonsuch (Ireland) Ltd, 2008)

‘A servant to the service’, a history of the Public Service Friendly Society (Dublin: Public Service Publishing, 2007)

The Church of Ireland community of Killala and Achonry (Dublin: Maynooth Series in Local History, Irish Academic Press, 1998)

Chapters in books and journals

‘Protestant tenant farmers and the land league’ in Carla King and Conor McNamara (eds.), The West of Ireland: New Perspectives on the Nineteenth Century (Dublin: The History Press, 2011)

‘The Protestant experience of revolution in County Leitrim, 1910-1930’ in Breifne Journal (2011)

 ‘The conversion of Connemara: the conflict between Paul Cullen and John MacHale’ in Daire Keogh and Albert McDonnell (eds.), Cardinal Paul Cullen and his world (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010)

‘Church of Ireland missions to the Roman Catholics of South Sligo, 1850-1900’ in Corran Herald (2010)

‘The Society for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics: Philanthropy or Bribery?’ in International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Jan. 2006), vol. xxx, issue i.

In memory of Aubrey Cecil White, 2nd Lieut. York & Lancaster Regt., who fell in action 1st July 1916, aged 20, while leading his men in the Battle of the Somme.

]]> http://irishprotestantism.ie/archives/274/feed 0 http://irishprotestantism.ie/archives/77 http://irishprotestantism.ie/archives/77#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:47:28 +0000 admin http://siobhan.sxs.ie/csip/?p=77 [...]]]>

Dr Caroline Gallagher holds a Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland and a PCTL in third level education. Current and previous teaching experience includes: Ecclesiastical architecture & material culture; Local government in the British Isles; World History to 1800; Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe; The British Isles from Reformation to the nineteenth century; Local History; Reading & evaluating archival sources; Examination & assignment preparation, Returning & Continuing education. Post-Doctoral Research (funded) at the Department of History, National University of Ireland Maynooth; Workshop Facilitator for adult learners, Department of Adult and Community Education, National University of Ireland Maynooth; Project Director ‘Bailieborough & the James family connection’, Peace III Initiative.

Main research interest: Nineteenth-century Church of Ireland history, architecture and material culture. Other research interests: Landed estates; the Irish Ascendancy class.

Publications

• Bailieborough and the James family connection, c. 1700-1932 (ed. & facilitator) (Cavan County Council, 2010)

• ‘Bishop Thomas Lewis O’Beirne of Meath (c. 1747-1823): politician and churchman’, in Ríocht na Midhe, xx (2009), pp 189-208
• ‘State and domestic arrangements in the household of the lord lieutenant of Ireland, 1794-95’, in

               Archivium Hibernicum, lxii (2009), pp 236-43

• Amendments to James Kelly’s ‘Thomas Lewis O’Beirne (1749-1823)’, in Oxford dictionary of national biography [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/20438] (Oct. 2009)

Conferences & presentations

• ‘Thomas Lewis O’Beirne (1747-1823): from a Roman Catholic seminary to the Church of Ireland see of Meath’. Irish History Students Association annual conference, Moore Institute, NUI Galway (March 2008)
• ‘The building and rebuilding of First Fruits churches in County Meath, 1800-23’, Meath Archaeological and Historical Society’s plenary session, Navan (Nov. 2007)
• ‘Bishop Thomas Lewis O’Beirne (c. 1747-1823)’, Longford Historical Society’s plenary session,

Longford (Sept. 2007)

• ‘Thomas Lewis O’Beirne (c. 1747-1823) and the First Fruits churches of the diocese of Meath’,

Post-graduate Research Seminar, NUI Maynooth (March 2006)

Awards

Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Postgraduate Scholarship, 2007-9.

Amount, €32,000

Professional Activities

Centre for the Study of Irish Protestantism (CSIP), 2010-

Research Assistant (Mercy Project) to Professor Colm Lennon 2010-2011

Facilitator on Northern Ireland Peace III programme for the border counties, 2010

Seminar coordinator for the Irish Historic Houses Association, 2009-2011

International conference coordinator for the Irish Historic Houses Association, 2010

Research Assistant (Ireland) to Professor D.H. Akenson, Queen’s University Ontario, 2009

National President of the Irish History Students Association, 2008-2009

Department of History representative on Postgraduate Feedback Council, 2008-2009

Department of History representative on National Postgraduate Review Council, 2008-2009

Memberships

Meath History Workshop

Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland (SSNCI)

Meath Archaeological & Historical Society

American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS)

The Conference Organising Committee and some distinguished speakers with (far left) Josephine Finn, Head of Adult and Community Education, Prof Philip Nolan, President of NUI Maynooth, and The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Michael Jackson.

The First CSIP Annual Conference took place in the National University of Ireland Maynooth 15-16 June 2012.  The theme was “Shaping identities: an historical and cultural exploration of Irish Protestantism”.

Tony Walsh and Prof Philip Nolan converse with delegates

Report on Inaugural Conference 15-16 June 2012

Launched on 15 June 2012 at NUI Maynooth, the Centre is located in the Department of Adult and Community Education, and linked to the Department of History, is dedicated to the interdisciplinary and participative exploration of the social, cultural, historical and spiritual dimensions of Irish Protestantism. Speaking at the launch, Professor Philip Nolan, President of NUI Maynooth, commented that ‘for a variety of historical and social reasons, religion has played a particularly significant role in Irish society and in the construction of individual and group identities in the country.  The Centre will play a key role in developing a richer understanding of minorities in general, their relationship to the contexts in which they exist, and of the processes which contribute towards peaceful coexistence.’

Speakers at the last conference (15-16 June) that accompanied the launch included Professor Eugenio Biagini (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), Professor Irene Whelan (Manhattanville College, New York, and Professor Alan Ford, University of Nottingham.. Over seventy  participants contributed to making this first event organised by the Centre a lively and stimulating occasion.

The breadth of experience of Irish Protestants has much to offer to the understanding of how minorities survive, change, adapt and integrate with the majorities among whom they live. With a view to promoting the study and theorisation of this experience, the Centre plans to host a range of seminars, conferences, and other activities: details will  be announced.