President Higgins announces speakers for second ‘Machnamh 100’ seminar

President Michael D. Higgins today announced the speakers addressing the second seminar in the Machnamh 100 series at Áras an Uachtaráin on Thursday 25th February.

Entitled “Empire: Instincts, Interests, Power and Resistance”, the seminar continues the President’s ‘Machnamh 100’ series of reflections on the context, consequences and continuing reverberations of the War of Independence, Civil War and Partition.

The seminar, which will be chaired by broadcaster, author and historian Dr. John Bowman, will recall significant events in Ireland a century ago, in the context of changes taking place within the British Empire.

Professor John Horne will provide the lead

contribution in the seminar, which will be responded to by Dr Niamh Gallagher (St. Catharine's College, Cambridge), Professor Eunan O’Halpin (Trinity College Dublin), Professor Alvin Jackson (University of Edinburgh), Dr. Marie Coleman (Queen’s University Belfast), and President Higgins.

 

• Professor John Horne is an historian. He is emeritus Fellow and former Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin. A Member of the Royal Irish Academy, he is also Vice-President of the Research Centre at the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne (France). From 2013 to 2019 he was a member of the Mission du Centenaire de la Grande Guerre, the French official commission for the Centenary of the Great War. In 2016-17 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford University. He is the author and editor of a number of books and over a hundred chapters and articles, many relating to the Great War. Among relevant publications are (ed.) A Companion to World War One (Oxford, Blackwell-Wiley, 2010); (ed.), Our War: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 2008; new ed., 2012); (ed., with Edward Madigan), Towards Commemoration: Ireland in War and Revolution, 1912-1923 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2013).

• Dr Niamh Gallagher from Co. Armagh is Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College. Her first book, Ireland and the Great War: A Social and Political History is a revisionist history of the Irish in the First World War and the first work of Irish history to win the Royal Historical Society’s 2020 Whitfield Prize. She is part of the Independent Historical Advisory Panel appointed by the British government to consider how to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland and recently joined a panel of esteemed historians at the Irish Embassy in London to speak about the legislation behind partition. She also leads the Mether Initiative at St Catharine’s College alongside former Labour Party minister and peer, Des Browne, where future leaders, academics and policymakers can connect and learn from the history of Britain and Ireland in all its variety.

• Professor Eunan O’Halpin MRIA studied at UCD and Cambridge. He was a civil servant before embarking on an academic career. From 1982 to 2000 he taught in Dublin City University, and from 2000 to 2020 was Bank of Ireland Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College Dublin. Amongst his works are Head of the Civil Service: A Study of Sir Warren Fisher, Defending Ireland: the Irish State and its Enemies since 1922, Kevin Barry: an Irish Rebel in Life and Death and (with Daithí Ó Corráin), The Dead of the Irish Revolution.

• Professor Alvin Jackson is the Richard Lodge Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh. He was educated at Corpus Christi College and Nuffield College Oxford and has taught at University College Dublin, Boston College and Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of seven books, including Ireland 1798- 1998: War, Peace & Beyond (second edition: 2010) and Judging Redmond and Carson (2018), and is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (2014). He is an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy.

• Dr Marie Coleman is a Reader in Modern Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast. She has written widely on the revolutionary period including a study of County Longford and the Irish revolution, 1910-1923. She is particularly interested in the role of women and gender relations during the period, the experience of the southern Protestant minority during the revolutionary decade, and the lives of revolutionary veterans after the conflict, including the award of pensions and medals. She is an advisor to the Department of Defence (Military Archives) Military Service Pensions Collection and to the Northern Ireland Office’s centenary historical panel, and a member of the Church of Ireland’s working group on historical centenaries.

 

The third ‘Machnamh 100’ seminar, scheduled to take place in May this year, will focus on hope, class and gender in the Irish independence struggle and its historiography.

The principal address at that seminar will be given by Dr Margaret O’Callaghan (Queens University Belfast), and respondents will be Dr Caitríona Clear (NUI Galway), Professor Linda Connolly (NUI Maynooth), Ms. Catríona Crowe, Archivist, and Dr. John Cunningham (NUI Galway).