Tuesday 28 May 2019

The Institute of Irish Studies presents a one-day postgraduate symposium on the theme of ‘Irish Identities at Home and Abroad’ in the Irish Studies Seminar Room, 27 University Square on Tuesday 28 May 2019. This postgraduate-led symposium aims to draw together research expertise across the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (and beyond) and promote the interdisciplinary nature of Irish Studies in Queen’s. Proposals on any topic relevant to ‘Irish Identities at Home and Abroad’ are welcome, and we particularly invite contributions that address the followings themes: • Irish representation on the page, stage or screen • Transnational transmissions of Irish identity • Ireland and global recognition • Translation • Diaspora, migration and identity

Friday 7 and Saturday 8 June 2019

This event will consider the contexts and events of the summer 1969 crisis in Northern Ireland, with particular focus on the outbreak of violence and deployment of British troops on the streets in August that year, and how this was represented in the media. It will combine presentations from BBCNI and leading academics in the field, and a witness seminar chaired by Lord Bew. For programme click link below. This is a free event, open to the public, but pre-registration is required via our Eventbrite page (link below) NB: Venue changed to Peter Froggatt Centre Lecture Theatre 0G/007, QUB (Main site).

The 2019 Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Conference will be hosted by Queen's University Belfast on 14-16 June 2019

Plenary speakers: Prof Fionntán de Brún (NUI Maynooth), Dr Catriona Kennedy (York), Prof Finola O’Kane (UCD), Exhibition and musical performances: the Bunting collection at Queen’s

We will be launching Guy Beiner's new book 'Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster' (Oxford University Press) on 24 January 2019 at 5pm in Lanyon 0G.074. Prof. Peter Gray and Dr Guy Beiner will speak. All welcome.

Forgetful Remembrance examines the paradoxes of what actually happens when communities persistently endeavour to forget inconvenient events. The question of how a society attempts to obscure problematic historical episodes is addressed through a detailed case study grounded in the north-eastern counties of the Irish province of Ulster, where loyalist and unionist Protestants — and in particular Presbyterians — repeatedly tried to repress over two centuries discomfiting recollections of participation, alongside Catholics, in a republican rebellion in 1798. Throughout Forgetful Remembrance, comparative references demonstrate the wider relevance of the study of social forgetting in Northern Ireland to numerous other cases where troublesome memories have been concealed behind a veil of supposed oblivion.

A Festival of Talks and Music to Celebrate the Life and Work of Edward Bunting (1773-1843).

All events are FREE and open to the public; tickets normally not required (see programme). Music at QUB; Skainos Centre, St Mary's Hall, St George's Church, Coláiste Feirste, Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich.

'History and memory through the looking glass: When does forgetting begin?' When does social forgetting begin? The sequence appears self-evident: first events are experienced, then they are remembered, and ultimately, they are forgotten. Hence, history is followed by memory, which wanes with time, so that, after due delay, forgetting sets in.

'On further thought, the notion of a neat linear succession may prove misleading. It could be argued that remembrance commences much earlier than is intuitively expected and that concerns of forgetting, though often unnoticed, may even be raised in advance of the unravelling of historical events.’ (Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance, p. 46). In the workshop, we will work through this conundrum and try and put some order into the puzzling relationships that tie history to memory and forgetting. This will be done by introducing and unpacking the seemingly paradoxical concepts of ‘Prememory’ and ‘Pre-Forgetting’, which may prove to be useful tools for those interested in the study of commemoration and social remembrance.

13 April 2018

A conference co-hosted with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame

8-9 June 2018

‘Moving Statues – Shifted Meanings: Contested Memorials in Ireland and the US’ will explore public controversies over contested monuments in Ireland and the Southern States of the USA, from the later 19th to the early 21st centuries.

Monday 12 March 2018

The Institute of Irish Studies will host a Symposium with papers from a number of speakers from Japanese universities on aspects of Ireland's relations with Japan and East Asia. 2pm-5pm in the Belfast Room, Ulster Museum (Stranmillis Road)

Saturday 24 March 2018

The Institute of Irish Studies will host a symposium on the Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland in 1968 and the memory the events of that year have left. The symposium will combine a witness seminar involving participants in the events of 1968 and a panel featuring new research on the Civil Rights movement and its legacies. For Programme and Free Registration, please visit our Eventbrite site.

Thursday 23rd November 2017

THE ULSTER PLACE-NAME SOCIETY: Annual Seán Mac Airt Memorial Lecture. 'The Importance of Place-names in the Storytelling Traditions of the Blue Stack Mountains' by Dr Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair RIA. At 8.00pm, Peter Froggatt Centre Room 02/018, Queen’s University Belfast

Thursday 14 Decembet 2017

Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies Lecture: 'The baron and "the Dook": the life and death of Arthur Reginald, 5th Baron De Freyne, 1879-1915' by Dr Frances Nolan (National Library of Ireland) (PRONI)

A symposium on the varied Irish political and cultural identities between 1650 and 1850. 22 May 2017

This event is organised by QUB Postgraduate Researchers in association with the Centre for 18th-Century Studies. This is a free event, but please email cconway22@qub.ac.uk if you intend to attend.

Catalonia, Northern Ireland, and Scotland - 11 May 2017

A Symposium hosted by the Institute of Irish Studies, in association with the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia.