Remembrance Conferences

The next decade will see a series of centenaries of key events in the history of modern Ireland, ranging from the Ulster Covenant, through the First World War and the 1916 Rising, to the foundation of the Irish and Northern Irish states.

2023 Reflections: endings, aftermaths and outcomes

On Saturday 18 November 2023 Universities Ireland hosted the twelfth annual Decade of Centenaries conference at Richmond Barracks, Saint Michael’s Estate, Dublin 8.

On the day, as well as the keynote address there were three panel discussions focusing on Reflections, Endings, Aftermaths and Outcomes and how they shaped our lives and society. The popular History Blitz made a return and it was a pleasure to welcome everyone again for a very enjoyable day!

Recordings of the sessions are available below.

Ireland 1922 Division, Crisis and Violence in Ireland

On Saturday 12 November 2022 Universities Ireland hosted the eleventh annual Decade of Centenaries conference in The Great Hall in Queen’s University Belfast. 

On the day, as well as the keynote address there were three panel discussions focusing on Crisis, Division and Violence. The popular History Blitz made a return and it was a pleasure to welcome everyone again for a very enjoyable day!

Recordings of the sessions are available below.

Photos kindly supplied by Eddie Soye

Ireland 1921 Preparing for Peace…Ready for War?

On Saturday 6 November 2021 at 10.00am Universities Ireland hosted the tenth annual Decade of Centenaries conference and its online iteration of the series.  This year’s conference explored the themes of Truce, Treaty, Consolidation of Northern Ireland and Partition & Socio-Economic Dimensions.

This years conference was hosed online. This was both a contingency in response to the global pandemic and was also an opportunity to reach new and wider audiences as part of our remit to bring audiences from North, South, and further afield together in the shared pursuit of historical understanding. Over 280 people registered for the event from Ireland, United Kingdom, Europe and America and they were welcomed to the conference by Prof Ian Greer, Universities Ireland President. The day consisted of four panels: Truce, Treaty, Partition and its Implications and Socio-economic Dimensions. We had a wide variety of speakers who provided us with some excellent presentations and some very animated discussions.

If you would like to catch up on the conference you can see the full day’s proceedings at the following link: Universities Ireland – Webinar

State formation, political violence, and civil resistance, Ireland north and south, 1919-22

On 7 November 2020, Universities Ireland hosted the ninth annual Decade of Centenaries conference and its first online iteration of the series. This year’s conference explored the themes of state formation, political violence, and civil disobedience with a focus on the year 1920.

 State formation

1920 witnessed important legislative developments which shaped the formation of Ireland’s two polities North and South. The central legislative advance that year was the drafting, passage, and enactment of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. This legislation was the first to propose a two-jurisdiction solution to the ‘Irish question’ setting up a Parliament of Northern Ireland and a Parliament of Southern Ireland. The Act was passed in December 1920 and laid the foundations of a self-governing Northern Ireland. The political experiment that was ‘Southern Ireland’ was dead in the water by the time elections were held in May 1921. In the South, Dáil Éireann grew in its power and remit during 1920 as it transformed itself from a revolutionary assembly into a state in waiting.

State formation entailed more than legislation however, and the conference  also explored the literary output of Irish writers in 1920 as a generation imagined the new political, personal, and poetic realities unfolding on the island of Ireland and beyond.

 Political violence

Levels of violence rose sharply in 1920. While the degree and types of violence varied across the island, the largest single category of victims throughout was civilians. Among the themes explored will be gendered violence and the degree to which women were targeted by the Crown forces and the IRA. The conference will also examine how the war on the ground evolved from a pattern of combatants targeting individual opponents to larger and more complex engagements. In Belfast, communal violence escalated to unparalleled levels, with consequences which still resonate today.

 

 Civil resistance

Differentiating between military activity and civil resistance to British Rule is problematic. For instance, it was the success of the Dáil loan that financed IRA activities, while the latter enforced the judgements of Dáil courts. But it was the often neglected activities of local authorities, cultural and sporting organisations, and above all the Labour movement that made Ireland ungovernable.

 

Digital format

This year, Universities Ireland was hosted the Decade of Centenaries Conference online. This is both a contingency in response to the global pandemic and was also an opportunity to reach new and wider audiences as part of our remit to bring audiences from North, South, and further afield together in the shared pursuit of historical understanding.

Building Foundations in Post-War Instability

This conference was organised by Universities Ireland, the network of university presidents and vice-chancellors from Ireland and Northern Ireland founded in 2003. Universities Ireland runs North-South scholarship schemes (including one for PhD students working in the 1912-1923 period); links Irish universities with their counterparts in Britain and Africa; supports persecuted scholars from countries where freedom of expression and inquiry is under threat; and undertakes a number of other initiatives to bring Irish and Northern Irish universities closer together. It is managed by the Centre for Cross Border Studies.

The Universities Ireland Historians Group was started in 2011. This conference is the eighth in a series of annual conferences that will continue until 2023, and is part of a multi-annual programme of activities led by the Universities Ireland Historians Group to reflect on the 1912-1923 period in Irish history. The aim is that this will be a scholarly and sustained initiative, and thus a unique contribution to reflection on a decade of history-changing events by the island’s intellectual leaders, the 10 universities (and, in particular, their Departments of History). The programme included research scholarships for young historians; lobbying British and Irish museums and archives to enhance access to key historical materials from the period; collaborative history teaching initiatives, and joint conferences and seminars.

Following on from last year’s ‘Propoganda and Mobilisation’ conference, the focus of this year’s session is the post-war general election of December 1918.  This was one of the most important events in Ireland’s modern history. Constitutional nationalism was swept away by the reborn republicanism of Sinn Féin in three of Ireland’s four provinces. It was not, however, an unvarnished triumph for the more radical Irish nationalism forged by Easter 1916 and the conscription crisis of 1918. The unionist position in North-East Ulster was further entrenched and the outlines of a future partitioned island became apparent from the electoral map.

While the revolutionary outcomes of the election have dominated historical analysis, it was also the most democratic election seen in Ireland up to that point. For the first time all men could vote, as could most women over 30 years of age. The electorate swelled from 800,000 to two million voters, providing a unique opportunity for radical political change.

The aim of this conference is to explore both the high politics of the moment and its wider social context. Why did Sinn Féin triumph? How did the enfranchisement of women shape the election and the status of women in society? How did unionists and Britain respond to the republican challenge? How was the election shaped by local and global concerns during a period of rapid revolutionary change?

Votes for the people: 1918

Universities Ireland, the network of university presidents and vice-chancellors on the island of Ireland, sponsored the seventh in a series of conferences to commemorate the centenary of key events in the history of modern Ireland ranging from the Ulster Covenant, through the First World War and the 1916 Rising, to the foundation of the Irish and Northern Irish States in Ulster University, York Street on Saturday 1st December 2018 under the title Reflecting on a decade of War and Revolution in Ireland 1912-1923: Votes for the people: 1918, Ireland’s first democratic election?

The post-war general election of December 1918 is one of the most important events in Ireland’ modern history. Constitutional nationalism was swept away by the reborn republicanism of Sinn Féin in three of Ireland’s four provinces. It was not, however, an unvarnished triumph for the more radical Irish nationalism forged by Easter 1916 and the conscription crisis of 1918. The Unionist position in North-East Ulster was further entrenched, and the outlines of a future partitioned island became apparent from the electoral map.

While the revolutionary outcomes of the election have dominated historical analysis, it was also the most democratic election seen in Ireland up to that point. For the first time all men could vote, as could most women over thirty years of age. The electorate swelled from 800,000 to two million voters, providing a unique opportunity for radical political change.

The aim of this conference was to explore both the high politics of the moment and its wider social context. Why did Sinn Féin triumph? How did the enfranchisement of women shape the election and the status of women in society? How did Unionists and Britain respond to the republican challenge? How was the election shaped by local and global concerns during a period of rapid revolutionary change?

To address these questions, we assembled some of Ireland and Britain’s leading historians of the period.

The conference speakers and talks included: Dr Diane Urquhart; Ms Claire McGing; Dr Colin Reid; Dr Helga Woggon; Lord Bew; Professor Michael Laffan; Professor Fearghal McGarry and Dr Eamon Phoenix.   Full programme available here.

 

 

Recordings

Introduction

Dr Diane Urquhart

Ms Claire McGing

Dr Colin Reid

Dr Helga Woggon

Lord Bew Pt 1

Lord Bew Pt 2

Prof Michael Laffan

Prof Fearghal McGarry

Dr Eamonn Phoenix Pt 1

Dr Eamonn Phoenix Pt 2

Questions & Answer 1

Questions & Answer 2

Questions & Answer 3

Questions & Answer 4

 

 

 

Propaganda and Mobilisation

On 18 Novemer 2017, Universities Ireland, the all-island coordinating body for Ireland’s ten universities north and south, hosted the 6th annual conference in its Decade of Centenaries series. Following on from last year’s ‘Historians on 1916’ conference, the focus of this year’s session was propaganda and mobilisation. Following the 1916 Rising, Irish politics underwent a period of profound transformation between the summer of 1916 and the winter of 1918. A major element of this was the metamorphosis of the 1916 Rising from a military failure into a successful foundation narrative of a reconstituted, republicanised, and revolutionised Sinn Féin. Much of this work was undertaken by female activists within Cuman na mBan and the wider republican movement and subsequently by released republican prisoners.

Transformative Irish by-elections punctuated the period under consideration but there is much more to the transformation of Irish politics than elections in a phase which witnessed martial law, food scares, moral panics, and the constant spectre of conscription being extended to Ireland.

A propaganda war was fought between advocates of constitutional and physical force nationalism as well as between recruiters for the Crown Forces and the Irish Republican Army during this period. The efforts of Irish republican activists between the capitulation of the Easter 1916 rebels and the General Election of 1918 can be viewed through the prism of mobilisation. Likewise, British wartime propaganda in the same period intensified. This was a time when Ireland was unique within the United Kingdom by virtue of its exemption from conscription. By taking the themes of mobilisation and propaganda, this conference sought to explore the shifting dynamics of Irish society and politics during a period that is often eclipsed by the prominence of the Rising at one end and the War of Independence at the other. In between these two major military events was a battle for hearts and minds, a clash of ideology, and the daily struggle of life in wartime. Socially, politically, and culturally, this year’s Universities Ireland Conference explored the complexities of this often-overlooked yet highly significant transitional phase in the long history of Ireland’s revolutionary decade.

Speakers included: Dr John Borgnovo, Lecturer, University College Cork; Dr William Murphy, Lecturer, Dublin City University;Dr Aidan Beatty, Lecturer, Wayne State University, Detroit; Dr Conor Mulvagh, University College Dublin; Prof Mary McAuliffe, Assistant Professor, Gender Studies,  University College Dublin; Dr Leanne Blaney, Lecturer, History, University College Dublin; Dr Daithí Ó Corráin, Lecturer, History and Geography, Dublin City University; Dr Ida Milne, IRC Marie Curie Elevate Fellow, Maynooth University and Dr Margaret Ward.

All of the presentations as well as the recordings of the speakers are available below.

To View PROGRAMME please click here

Presentations:

Aidan Beatty – Masculinity, Race and Nationalist Propaganda, 1916-1923

Ailbhe Rogers – The welfare of Irish political prisoners in Dundalk Gaol in the aftermath of Thomas Ashe’s death, Oct 1917 – Jul 1918

Conor Heffernan – From Bloom to Battle. Tracing Ireland’s Early Physical Culture Movement

Conor Mulvagh – Manufacturing Consensus. Polite society, policy and the Irish Convention

Daithi Ó Corráin – Dissension, defection and denouement, the National Volunteers 1916-17

Dara Folan – Town & Gown’ in post Rising Ireland

Gerri ONeill – How national aid made propaganda pay

Ida Milne – The German Plot and the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, a perfectly Propagandic disease

Leanne Blaney – Cars, canvassing and conveyance during the 1918 General Election

Margaret Ward – Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and the propaganda war in America 1917-1918

Mary McAuliffe – “Post-Rising Propaganda and Republican womanhood as the ‘heroic subordinate”

Shane Browne – The National Volunteers: the power of political notables in mobilising the masses?

William Murphy – Prisons, Prisoners and Mobilising Protest, 1916-1918

Recordings:

Intoduction

Dr Aidan Beatty

Dr Mary McAuliffe

Dr John Borgnovo

Questions

Dr Daithi O Corrain

Introduction & Shane Browne

Conor O’Neill

Gerri O’Neill

Ailbhe Rogers

Dara Folan

Dr Conor Mulvagh

Dr Ida Milne

Dr Margaret Ward

 

Courts martial records of 1916 leaders

THE official courts martial records of the leaders of the Easter Rising have been made available online to the public.

Papers relating to the 1916 courts martial have been acquired from the UK’s National Archives and will be published on several websites, including that of the National Archives of Ireland.

The records, which include the prisoners’ last letters to their loved ones, were officially launched by President Michael D. Higgins in Dublin on Thursday 22 September 2016.

The launch took place at Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, where the proceedings of the courts martial were recorded.

The barracks were also where many of those involved in the Rising spent the final days of their lives.

President Higgins said for many years the key documents were “kept secret and were inaccessible to the general public”.

He said the papers “provide moving and valuable insights into the proceedings; imparting a human dimension that can so often be missed from conventional factual historical accounts”.

“Thomas MacDonagh’s statement that he fully co-operated with British soldiers after the surrender, or the image of Seán McDiarmada unable to walk after surrender because of polio contracted five years before, indicate a dignified sadness that echoes across the years,” he said.

“They, and the many other images captured in these records, remind us that the leaders of 1916 were human and wounded agents of our freedom, not abstract or mythical characters; and they enable us to have a profound appreciation of the real and human sacrifices that they and their families made in order that future generations might inhabit a free and independent state.”

The documents can be viewed on www.nationalarchives.ie

Historians on 1916

On Saturday 22 October 2016, Universities Ireland, the all-island coordinating body for Ireland’s ten universities north and south, organised a major conference at the Conference and Events Venue at Dublin’s Mansion House entitled ‘Historians on 1916.

Following the wave of commemorations on Ireland’s two great foundation narratives, the Easter Rising and the Somme, this conference brought together historians as practitioners to reflect on what has passed in this monumental year of commemoration.

The event featured keynote addresses from leading historians from across Ireland and Britain and with panels specifically addressing class and gender.

 

 

 

Life and Death in 1915

Universities Ireland sponsored the fourth in a series of conferences to commemorate the centenary of Irish History between the years of 1912-1923 at the Thomas Davis Theatre in Trinity College Dublin on Saturday 27th June 2015.

The conference reflected on ‘Life And Death In 1915’ with 13 speakers and panellists addressing the audience throughout the day’s activity.

Reflecting on a decade of War and Revolution in Ireland 1912-1923: The Road To War.

The keynote speakers included

  • Professor Eunan O’Halpin, Professor of Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College Dublin
  • Dr Caitriona Clear, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, NUI Galway