Wales-Ireland Network
Established in 2007, the Ireland–Wales Research Network aims to explore the creative, cultural, and political relationships between Wales and Ireland.
The Network, a partnership between Cardiff and Aberystwyth Universities, aims to develop a deeper awareness of the overlapping, complex and connected histories of Wales and Ireland.
Iwan Bala 'Atlantea', 2007. Mixed media on Khadi paper. With the permission of the artist, Iwan Bala.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council the Network was launched the Consul General of Ireland in Wales on November 22nd, 2007, at a reception sponsored by the Government of Ireland. (For press coverage of the launch, see Cardiff University's main News, BBC News and the Western Mail).
The Network is managed by Dr Claire Connolly, Dr Katie Gramich (Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy) and Dr Paul O'Leary (Department of History and Welsh History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth).
For an introduction to the comparative research being undertaken, see the special issue of Irish Studies Review, Volume 17 Issue 1 (Feb 2009). Claire Connolly and Katie Gramich’s Introduction to the special issue is available.
Cardiff University Wales–Ireland Seminar Series
Hosted and sponsored by Cardiff University School of English, Communication and Philosophy, with sponsorship from Culture Ireland and Academi, these Seminar series have run in 2007-8 and 2008-9. For details of the 2010/11 programme of seminars click here.
AHRC-funded Ireland–Wales Symposia
There have been five Symposia to date organised by the Network and sponsored by the AHRC: Comparisons and Contexts, Romantic Nations, Culture and Creativity, Nations and Knowledges,and a Postgraduate symposium.
Public lectures and readings
Lectures to date have been delivered by Paul Muldoon, Gwyneth Lewis, Mike Young, John Horgan & Geraint Talfan Davies (in conversation), and Paul Murphy MP.
Westering Home
Bernard O'Donoghue
Though you'd be pressed to say exactly where
It first sets in, driving west through Wales
Things start to feel like Ireland. It can't be
The chapels with their clear grey windows,
Or the buzzards menacing the scooped valleys.
In April, have the blurred blackthorn hedges
Something to do with it? Or possibly
The motorway, which seems to lose its nerve
Mile by mile. The houses, up to a point,
With the masoned gables, each upper window
A raised eyebrow. More, though, than all of this,
It's the architecture of the spirit;
The old thin ache you thought that you'd forgotten-
More smoke, admittedly than flame;
Less tears than rain. And the whole business
Neither here nor there, and therefore home.
From Neither Here nor There (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999)
With the kind permission of Bernard O'Donoghue.
