This is a past event
As the tensions and contradictions between the global economic system and national affirmations of cultural and political identity come into sharp focus, the SSNCI annual conference seeks to establish how the polarity between universalism and locality was articulated and examined in nineteenth-century Ireland. Drawing inspiration from the work of Aberdeen sociologist, Roland Robertson, who was an early exponent of globalisation as a critical term, and coined the word glocalism, 2025's conference seeks to explore the ways in which Irish communities, commentaries, writers and activists situated the country' s condition in the context of both global trends and in local particularity.
The status of Ireland post-Union simultaneously contracted and expanded. While the Act of Union diminished formal politics on the island to a local level, the export of clergy across the globe established what Colin Barr has termed Ireland's spiritual empire. Irish identity (ever ambiguous) was threatened and preserved on various fronts including the OS survey which made Irish regionality more knowable and accessible while also challenging its existence via linguistic anglicization. Various waves of Celtic Revival promised to uncover, preserve and disseminate an authentic Irishness often tied to specific geographic locations (the Ardagh Chalice, Tara Brooch, Book of Kells) while reproduction of these items saw the burgeoning of a global Celtic brand. Later in the century, the modernist experiments of fin de siècle Ireland fashioned novel means of expressing and managing the challenges implied in what Jürgen Osterhammel has described as the transformation of the world into a globally networked economic, political and social system. While exploring Ireland's place in this wider communicative world, the conference also seeks to examine how localised cultural expression refracted and resisted these changes. Seeking to understand the weave of influences that generated a glocal experience of living in nineteenth-century Ireland, the conference thus also attends to life in the parish and the neighbourhood and to the maintenance of cultural practices and the problems inherent in displacement and isolation.
Friday 20 June
9.00-9.30: Registration and Welcomes (Craig Suite 1)
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Michael Brown (University of Aberdeen) |
Marguérite Corporall (Radboud University) |
9.30-11.00: Keynote One (Craig Suite 1)
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Chair: |
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Colleen Taylor (Boston College) |
‘Nineteenth-Century Ireland and the Blue Humanities: The Curious Case of Clew Bay’ |
11.00-11.30
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Tea/Coffee |
11.30-1.00: Session One
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Ulster (Craig Suite 1) Chair:
Kyle Hughes (Ulster University), Francis Turnly (1765-1845): Imagining Universal Governance in the Glens of Antrim
Ciara Henderson (Independent), ‘Forged in Stone: Contesting the Universality of Irish Death Traditions’
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Imperial Connections (Craig Suite 2) Chair:
Jay Roszman (Cork), The Queen’s Colleges: Imperial Education for a ‘Local’ Population
Rachel M. Beck, Global Empire, Local Roots: Exploring Identity Formation in a Nineteenth-Century Limerick Milling Dynasty
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1.00-2.00
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Sandwich Lunch |
2.00-3.30: Session Two
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Literature and the Regions (Craig Suite 1) Chair:
Michael Brown (University of Aberdeen), Irish Melodies and the British Problem: The Case of Thomas Moore
Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University), Global Localities: The Transnational Dimensions of Irish Regional Fiction, 1880-1910
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Migration (Craig Suite 2) Chair:
Fiona Slevin (Independent), Responsibilities, Remittances and Remonstrations: Emigrants and the Family in post-Famine Ireland
Robert O’Sullivan, Anti-Colonial Revolution and American Intervention: Irish Americans and the Ten Years’ War in Cuba – 1868-1878
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3.30-4.00
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Tea/Coffee |
4.00-5.00: Keynote Two (Craig Suite 1)
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Chair: |
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Isabelle Torrance (Aarhus University) |
‘National Politics and Universal Exempla in Nineteenth-Century Ireland’ |
5.30-7.00
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Reception |
Cruickshank Botanic Gardens |
Saturday 21 June
9.00-10.30: Session Three
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Imagining the Land (Craig Suite 1) Chair:
Meg Dolan (University of St Andrews), A Survey of Robert French’s Irish Tourism Photographs and Their Implications
Siobhan Osgood (Irish Association of Professional Historians), ‘The Alphabet of the Engineer: The Universal Language of Engineering Draughtsmanship’
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Irish Sexualities (Craig Suite 2) Chair:
Maeve Hagerty (Oxford), ‘“Queerying” the Dublin Medical Press: Queer Theory and Irish Discourse on the Medicalised Maternal Body, 1880-1900’
Michael Lawrence (Queen’s University, Belfast), ‘“I wished to see London”: Transnational Irish Sexualities and the Dublin Castle Scandal of 1883-4’
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10.30-11.00
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Tea/Coffee |
11.00-12.30: Session Four: Ground Floor and Basement Level Sir Duncan Rice Library
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Fear and Fascination: Exploring Local and Global Irish Themes in Exhibition and Event Contexts
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Visit to Exhibition ‘Fear and Fascination’ Followed by discussion Sir Duncan Rice Library
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12.30-1.30
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Sandwich Lunch |
1.30- 2.30 (Craig Suite 1)
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SSNCI Annual General Meeting (Lunch can be brought into the meeting) |
2.30-4.00: Session Five
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Poverty and Wealth (Craig Suite 1) Chair:
Aidan Gilsenan (Maynooth University), ‘Wounded soldiers’ or ‘patriots for a pound a week’? Evicted Tenants in Irish Life and Politics, 1879-1897
Patrick Maume, Fathers and Sons in Killynick and Kirriemuir: Shan Bullock’s Making of a Soldier (1916) and the World the Great War Ended
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Global Lives (Craig Suite 2) Chair:
Michelle McGoff-McCann (Irish Association of Professional Historians) From Rebellion to Empire: The MacIlwaine Family’s Glocal Journey Through Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Ronan McGreechin (University of Stirling) Irish National and Occupational Identity on the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth-Century Clydeside
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4.00-5.00: Keynote Three (Craig Suite 1)
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Chair: |
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Niall Whelehan (University of Strathclyde) |
‘Universalisms and their Uses: Irish Migrants in South America’ |
7.30-9.00
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Conference Dinner |
Terrace @ HMT |
- Hosted by
- Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies
- Venue
- Sir Duncan Rice Library: Craig Suite
- Contact
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For further information, pelase contact Profoessor Michael Brown (m.brown@abdn.ac.uk)