St Mary’s to Host British Association for Irish Studies Conference

The Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham is to host the 2015 British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS) conference entitled Ireland: Agents of Social Transformation in September. The conference will look at how much of the Irish story in the twentieth century has been about Ireland’s transformation from being a neglected corner of the British Empire to its emergence as one of the world’s most globalized societies. However, the first decade of the twenty-first century exposed the country to a world financial crisis in an acute form. The resulting socio-economic transformation is given greater perspective by considering it over a longer period, and connecting its manifestations in various other domains from consumerism to religion, from migration to the mass media. The need for transformation in Ireland has been generated as much by critiques of institutions such as the Catholic Church, the political system and other public bodies, such as the health service, as by the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. Since 2008, emigration has predictably accelerated again although its character is qualitatively different from previous phases of outward migration. This conference takes ‘transformation’ and ‘agents/agency’ as key terms that involve a consideration of fundamental changes in the way Irish society is organised, ruled, imaged and perceived. Social transformation lies at the radical end of conceptions of social change and implies fundamental changes in society’s core institutions, the polity, the economy, and cultural production. Keynote Speakers for the conference include Distinguished Visiting Professor at St Mary’s for 2015-16 and former Uachtaran na hEireann/President of Ireland Mary McAleese, Prof Patrick Lonergan, University of Galway, and Director of the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century, University College Cork Linda Connolly. Papers are invited which engage with the issue of social transformation across the disciplinary spectrum which, while acknowledging the political and economic basis of the crisis acknowledge that its consequences are as much existential as economic, psychological as well as political. Presentations are welcomed which look to the effects of the crisis on all aspects of private and public life and their historical contextualisation, recording, realisation and representation in forms as diverse as music, mass demonstrations, theatre, migration, membership of the EU and constitutional reform. The multiple manifestations of the consequences of crisis as Ireland engages with what Fintan O’Toole termed ‘the hard task of making a republic.’ For further information about the conference please contact Ivan Gibbons at ivan.gibbons@stmarys.ac.uk.