Speakers 2014-2019

The speakers who have taken part in the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Summer School since its inauguration in 2014 are as follows:

2014 Theme “Micheál Uí Cléirigh”

Professor John McCafferty 

John McCaffertyJohn McCafferty is Director of the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, a partnership between University College Dublin and the Irish Franciscans. He holds a PhD in history from Cambridge University and has taught in UCD, where he took his first two degrees, since 1994. He has published  on the histories of both Protestant and Catholic Churches in early modern Ireland. He has spoken in the 2014 School on The Franciscans in Exile At the 2015 School on Why the Irish Saints mattered so much to the Irish Franciscans the and at the  2016 Summer School on Wanderers How the Friars decided that the Irish “Saved Civilisation”

 Gaelic Learning – Dr Marc Caball

DRMC

Dr Marc Caball

Dr Marc Caball: is a senior lecturer in UCD School of History and Archives. is a historian of early modern Ireland with particular expertise in the cultural history of Gaelic Ireland. He has recently begun to publish on the long neglected history of print and the book in early modern Ireland. A former research scholar of the Dublin Institute of advanced studies, he holds a D. Phil from the university of Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is a council member of the Irish Texts Society and was the director of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) between 2001 and 2005.

The Plantation of Ulster -Jeffrey Cox

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Dr Jeffrey Cox

Jeffrey Cox: completed his bachelors in History at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and taught at secondary level in both the United States and Northern Ireland. Jeffrey completed his MA in Early Modern History at UCD n 2011 and his current PhD research is a comparative study of religious change in Kildare and Sussex between 1560 and 1640. He tutors occasionally at UCD  School of History and Archives and currently serves on the organising committee for the Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference.

 Franciscan Life-Dr Joseph McMahon OFM

JMMOFM

Dr Joseph McMahon OFM

Dr Joseph MacMahon OFM is Secretary of the Irish Franciscan Province. He holds degrees in history, philosophy and theology from the National University of Ireland Galway (B.A.) and the Catholic University of Louvain (Ph.B, S.T.D., Ph.D.). He lectured in theology in Catholic institutes in Latin America and Africa. He was one of the co-editors of The Irish Franciscans 1534-1990 (Dublin, 2009). In recent years, he has worked on the Irish Franciscan contribution to Scotism and is a member of the UCD-OFM Partnership Committee that oversees the work of the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute.

Keynote Speaker 2014 Dr Bernadette Cunningham

“The Annals of the Four Masters”

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Dr Bernadette Cunningham

Dr Bernadette Cunningham is a graduate of University College Galway and University College Dublin, and is Deputy Librarian at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. She is the author of The world of Geoffrey Keating (Dublin, 2000); The Annals of the Four Masters: Irish history, kingship and society in the early seventeenth century (Dublin, 2010); and Clanricard and Thomond: 1540 –1640: provincial politics and society transformed (Dublin, 2012). She is current editor of Irish History Online, the national online bibliography of writings on Irish history (www.iho.ie).

2015  Theme “Saints and Scholars”

Dr Dagmar Ó Riain Raedel- From Tír Conaill to Bavaria The extraordinary career of Muiredach mac Robairtaig

Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel

Dr Dagmar Ó Riain Raedel

Dr Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel has been a member of the Department of History, University College Cork with a special research interest in Medieval History. She has lectured and published widely on the connections between Ireland and Europe from 600 to the 19th century. She has a special interest in art and architecture, both medieval and modern and, particularly, in the buildings of Cork. In the last few years she has researched the legacy of the architectural family of Hills which contributed many noteworthy buildings to Cork.

Dr Mícheál MacCraith – Louvain Hagiography and Roman Art

Micheal Mac Craith

Dr Mícheál MacCraith

Mícheál Mac Craith. O.F.M. Professor of Modern Irish, NUI, Galway; Scoil na Gaelige, OE Gaillimh, Gaillimh, Republic of Ireland;. Research interest: The literary work of Irish exiles in Leuven and Rome in the 17th century.He has written extensively including the following works Renaissance in Ireland, Counter-Reformation Literature, Irish Courtly Love Literature, James Macpherson and Ossianism, Contemporary Irish Poetry and prose.He is presently Guardian of St Isidore’s College in Rome.

Helen Meehan- The New St Patrick Bishop George Mongomery

Helen Meehan

Helen Meehan

Helen Meehan is a former President of the Donegal Historical Society and was born in Frosses Co Donegal. Helen is a retired primary School teacher and in n 2012 was awarded an Honorary Masters Degree by National University of Ireland, Galway in recognition of her work in the genealogy, folklore and local history of County Donegal. She is a regular speaker at Society Seminars and to other groups, and has published in The Donegal Annual, Bealoideas (University College Dublin), Due North – Journal of the Federation of Ulster Local Studies (Belfast), Journal of Clan Montgomery, The Spark (Enniskillen) as well as many local history publications. In 2005 Helen published her 728 page ‘Inver Parish in History’. 

Keynote Speaker 2015

Dr Pádraig Ó Riain  – The Saints of South Donegal

Padraig O Riain

Dr Pádraig Ó Riain

Pádraig Ó Riain is an Irish Celticist and prominent hagiologist focusing on Irish hagiography, martyrdom, mythology, onomastics and codicology. He has spent much of his academic life at the University College, Cork where he became a lecturer in 1964. Between 1973 and his retirement, he was professor of Old and Middle Irish. He has been a member of the Royal Irish Academy since 1989, president of the Irish Texts Society since 1992, Parnell Fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge since 2002 and more recently, a member of the Placenames Commission of Ireland (An Coimisiún Logainmneacha)2016

2016 Theme “Refugees & Stranger -The Irish in Europe 1500-1800”

Dr Declan Downey UCD

Dr Declan Downey pic3

Dr Declan Downey

Dr. Declan Downey, lecturer at the School of History and Archives, UCD, spoke about the  Irish Integration into the Continental Nobilities, c.1600-c.1900 (Consciousness of Origin & Cosmopolitanism) relating how the Irish found themselves in prominent positions in the Royal Courts of Europe.

Dr Paddy Fitzgerald QUB

Dr Paddy Fitzgerald

Dr Paddy Fitzgerald

Dr Patrick Fitzgerald talked about emigration from the North Western part of Ireland  in the 18th Century at the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Summer School.  Although many native Irish left for the continent in the 17th Century, the Presbyterian descendants of the families who arrived to settle in Ulster in the years after the Ulster Plantation found that farm rents were unaffordable and that the restrictions on their civil freedoms by the Anglican Irish Parliament were intolerable, began to leave Ireland  to begin a new life in the  New World.He has an overarching interest in all aspects of human migration relating to Ireland from 1600 to the present. Particular interests include Poverty and subsistence migration, Irish migration to Britain (1600-1800), British migration to Ireland (1600-1900), visual representations of historic Irish migration and Ulster historiography.

Patrick Fitzgerald was educated at Queen’s University Belfast. A former curator at the Ulster-American Folk Park he has been teaching a QUB Masters in Irish Migration Studies since 1996.

He has published works including: (with Brian Lambkin), Migration in Irish History, 1607-2007 ‘‘Irish Return Migration from the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and ’‘Scottish Migration to Ireland in the Seventeenth Century’

Dr Marion Lyons Keynote Speaker 2016

2016 more OCleary school - 244

Dr Marion Lyons

Dr. Marion Lyons,co-author of works on early Irish migrants in Europe, gave the keynote address on how the Irish found themselves as strangers in Europe but also became citizens.  Dr Lyons is a professor of History at NUI Maynooth or Maynooth University She has also published several works including Church and society in County Kildare, c.1470-1547in 2000,  France and Ireland, 1500-1610: politics, migration and trade. in 2003 and in 2013 Death and dying in Ireland, Britain and Europe: historical perspectives            

2017 Theme “Not only Irish but European”

Mary E DalySchool Opening by Dr Mary Daly- President of  the Royal Irish Academy. Professor of Modern Irish History U.C.D.

When elected as President of the Royal Irish Academy in 2014 she was the first woman to be elected to that position in the Academy’s 230 year history. Professor Mary Daly was educated at University College Dublin (BA, MA) and Nuffield College Oxford (D. Phil.). During her academic career at UCD she also held visiting positions at Harvard Boston College and EUI Florence.

The Europe that Br. Mícheál Uí Cléirigh and the Irish Friars encountered after 1607.Alison Forrestal

By Dr. Alison Forrestal N.U.I. Galway

Dr Forrestal is a Lecturer in the Department of History at NUI Galway. Her interests lie in early modern European history. She has a particular interest in ecclesiastical and religious history of the 17th Century.

Mark-Empey

Dr. Mark-Empey

Traders, tricksters and tearaways:

the Irish in Europe in the 17th Century

by Dr. Mark Empey N.U.I. Galway.

Dr. Mark Empey is a lecturer in early modern British and Irish history at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research has focused on political and religious British and Irish history in the past.
He completed his PhD at University College Dublin (UCD) in 2009; with a thesis examined peripheral governments in the early Stuart period by comparing the policies Sir Thomas Wentworth pursued as king’s representative in the Council of the North (Yorkshire) and in Ireland.

Brexit-The potential fallout in Political & Constitutional terms

Deaglan-de-Breadun

Deaglan-de-Breadun

by Deaglán De Breadún, journalist, author & broadcaster.

Deaglán de Bréadún is a former award-winning journalist for the  Irish Times. He held a number of positions including Northern Editor, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Irish Language Editor and most recently Political Correspondent.

Irish Culture today on a global & European stage.

Alan Titley

Dt Alan Titley

by Dr Alan Titley U.C.C.

Alan Titley is a novelist, story writer, playwright and scholar. He has also written and presented documentary films on literary and historical subjects, and has been writing a weekly column for The Irish Times on current and cultural affairs since 2003.

He was born and raised in the city of Cork, where he studied to be a primary school teacher. His work took him to Nigeria where he taught during the Biafran War. While there he travelled extensively across West Africa through both jungle and desert. He returned and taught deaf children in Dublin while studying for an evening degree at University College Dublin.

 

Keynote Address

From Donegal to Purgatory (and back) Europe Lough Derg & the Irish FranciscansJohn Mc Cafferty

by Dr John McCafferty UCD

 John McCafferty is Director of the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, a partnership between University College Dublin and the Irish Franciscans. He holds a PhD in history from Cambridge University and has taught in UCD, where he took his first two degrees, since 1994. He has published  on the histories of both Protestant and Catholic Churches in early modern Ireland.

 2018 Theme “Annals & Earls”

8.15pm- The Annals- an overview

Dr John Mc CaffertyJohn Mc Cafferty gave a short talk explaining to everyone what the “Annals of the Four Masters” were and the way the books were constructed and how this was a very radical  development in the early 17th Century. He also remarked that only that this work was undertaken the loss to Irish history would be on the same scale as the loss of material in the Four Courts in 1922 were to family records, as subsequently many of the source manuscripts that they used were lost in the upheavals in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Professor John Mc Cafferty is the Director of the Mícheál Uí Cléirigh Institute University College Dublin.

Genealogy Links by Frank McHugh

2018 O Cleary Saturday - 068Many of us at school were taught history as an academic subject where we learned about the great occasions in history, wars, battles, invasions and those who were emperors, kings or statesmen. But what of the ordinary folk, our ancestors – who were they and how did the events of history affect their lives?

Frank McHugh told those in attendance that the first step in finding out about your family’s past is to talk to elderly relatives, show them pictures of family (if you have them) and get as much first hand information as possible.

He also gave advice and tips on which websites to visit where the information is free.

Born in Belfast to Fermanagh parents, Frank McHugh has a Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Studies from the University of Strathclyde. He is currently a Director of the Fermanagh Genealogy Centre and also works as a freelance Researcher and Genealogist.

Saturday Afternoon – Summer School Events

Opening of the Summer School by Professor Emeritus Pádraig Ó Riain

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Professor Emeritus Padraig Ó Riain agreed to step in at short notice to step in due to the cancellation of one of the speakers to open the 2018 Summer School. In his address he told us about the Annals and their importance to our modern understanding of Irish history.

O’Neill & O’Donnell & the war in the west by James O’Neill UCC

james o'Neills bookJames O’Neill  book “The Nine Years War 1593-1602” was published in 2017, was unable to attend the weekend due to personal reasons. However James kindly sent his presentation along to the Summer School and it was delivered by Professor John Mc Cafferty.

The O’Donnells in Hapsburg Vienna- The saviours of an Empire? by Dagmar O’Riain Raedel UCC

Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel

Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel

Dr Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel has been a member of the Department of History, University College Cork with a special research interest in Medieval History. She has lectured and published widely on the connections between Ireland and Europe from 600 to the 19th century. She has a special interest in art and architecture, both medieval and modern and, particularly, in the buildings of Cork. In the last few years she has researched the legacy of the architectural family of Hills which contributed many noteworthy buildings to Cork.

 

Roisin Dubh-The story of Ireland or a Franciscan led astray? by Cathal Goan Director General RTÉ 2003-2010

Cathal Goan

Cathal Goan

Was Róisín Dubh truly a song about Ireland or was it about a friar’s love for a woman! The question will be raised by former RTE Director General Cathal Goan as the  keynote speaker at the Micheal O’Cleirigh Summer School in May.

He will examine if the 16th-century song Róisín Dubh – Black Rose – is truly a metaphor for Ireland or a song of a Franciscan led astray by a woman’s beauty.

The song has references to friars out on the brine and to the Erne, which passes through the County Donegal town of Ballyshannon, close to where Franciscan Brother Micheal O’Cleirigh was born at Creevy.