MELBOURNE IRISH STUDIES SEMINARS
An Inter-University Forum for Irish and Irish-Australian Studies
MISS has returned to Newman College, in the Jabiru Room in the Academic Centre, while also providing online access via Zoom. We follow all current Government regulations. Zoom links will be sent out a day before seminars. While most MISS talks will be on Tuesdays, the times may vary depending on availability of speaker and space at Newman. Please RSVP to dianne.hall [at] vu.edu.au if you would like to attend online. Recordings will be provided where possible on this page. General queries may be addressed to melbirishstudies [at] gmail.com
SEMINAR PROGRAMME
2026 Seminars
Wednesday 11th February, 2026 at 3:00pm – 5:00pm (AEDT)
Afternoon Seminar with 2026 O’Donnell Fellows
Prof. Brian Ó Conchubhair, Director of Irish Language Initiatives, Notre Dame University
An Absent Presence: The Irish Language in Australia
Prof. Louis de Paor, Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway
Simple Lessons and ‘Distant Outposts’: Pádraic Mac Piarais and An Claidheamh Soluis, 1903-1909
Wednesday 18th March, 2026, 4:30pm (AEST). In-person and online.
Ellen O’Leary, DPhil candidate, University of Oxford
Claire Keegan’s (Re)past: Appetite, Autonomy and Temporality
POSTPONED | Wednesday 15th April, 2026, 4:30pm (AEST). In-person and online.
Dr Sarah Corrigan, Allan Myers Lecturer in Latin Language and Literature, University of Melbourne
Early Medieval Ireland in Relation to the Ocean
Wednesday 24th June, 2026, 4:30pm (AEST). In-person and online.
Dr Laura Jocic, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University
Bound for Australia: Anne Trotter’s Needlework Specimen book, 1840
2025 Seminars
Wednesday 12th November, 2025 at 4:00pm (AEDT). In-person only.
Prof. James Chandler, University of Chicago
Yeats and the poetry of ‘Romantic Ireland
Wednesday 8h October, 2025 at 4:30pm (AEST). In-person and online.
Constantin Torve, Queen’s University, Belfast.
Taighde gan teanga, taighde gan tuiscint – agrarian protest, territoriality, and bilinguality in nineteenth-century Ireland
Wednesday 20th August, 2025 at 6:00pm (AEST). Online only.
Ciaran O’Neill, TCD
Irish-Native American solidarities
Wednesday 9th July, 2025 at 4:30pm (AEST). In-person and online.
Frances Devlin Glass
Counter-Cultural Truth-Telling in Furphy’s Fiction and Bulletin ‘Pars’.
Wednesday 28th May, 2025 at 6:00pm (AEST) , Online Only.
Fergal McDonald, Victoria University, Melbourne
Contact with the Past, Connections in the Present: Springhill Community House and the Ballymurphy Massacre Campaign
Wednesday 16th April, 2025 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Áine Ní Ghlinn
Finding readers in a minority language
2024 Seminars
Wednesday 11th September, 2024 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Dr Elizabeth Pearce, University of Melbourne
Between Cork and France: Ireland’s First Chair of Poetry John Montague in French translation
Wednesday 21st August, 2024 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Jeremy George PhD.c, University of Melbourne
Settling for Less: Elizabeth Bowen’s World
Wednesday 22nd May, 2024 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Prof. Dianne Hall, Victoria University, Melbourne
Stories of migration and return in 1930s Ireland: The Schools Collection
Tuesday 12th March, 2024 at 4:30pm (AEDT)
Sarah Howe & Charles Richardson
Beyond the sectarian model? Voting and the future of Northern Ireland
Tuesday 6th February, 2024 at 4:30pm (AEDT)
Dr Mary Lawton, University College Cork
Nordic Joyce: Old Cawcaws Huggin and Munin for his Strict Privatear
2023 Seminars
Tuesday 21st November, 2023 at 6:30pm (AEDT), Online only
Prof Anna Johnston, University of Queensland
“Songs of an Exile”: Sentiment and Violence in Eliza Hamilton Dunlop’s Irish and Australian Elegies, 1838-63
Tuesday 12th September, 2023 at 6:30pm (AEST), Online only
Sophie Cooper, Queen’s University Belfast
Material culture, women and the Irish diaspora
Tuesday 22nd August, 2023 at 6:30pm (AEST), Online only
Rodney Sullivan and Robin Sullivan
A Hundred Thousand Welcomes: Opening Windows on Irish Queensland
Tuesday 25th July, 2023 at 4:30pm (AEST), Hybrid
Scott McCarthy, Deakin University, Melbourne
‘Gentlemanly young Australians’ and ‘Cawtholic snobs’: the liminal nature of middle-class Catholic identity in Victoria and New South Wales prior to the Great War
Tuesday 9th May, 2023 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Prof. Stephen Regan, Durham University and University of Melbourne
W. B. Yeats: Culture and Politics in 1921
Tuesday 18th April, 2023 at 4:30pm (AEST)
Prof. Dianne Hall and Loretta Dynan, Victoria University, Melbourne
Going Home: Returning to Ireland from Australia, 1850-1925
Tuesday 7th February, 2023 at 4:30pm (AEDT)
Prof Peter Gray and A/Prof Emily Mark-Fitzgerald O’Donnell Visiting Fellows in Irish Studies
The Life & Work of Count Paul Strzelecki (1797-1873): Australian Explorer and Irish Humanitarian
2022 Seminars
Tuesday 11th October, 2022 at 4:30pm (AEDT)
Rhys Ryan, 2022 Russell Beedles Performing Arts Fellow SLV
Na Trí Céilithe: Revisiting the dances of Melbourne’s Gaelic concerts in the early twentieth century
Tuesday 13th September, 2022 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Dr Damian Gleeson, 2022 Australian Religious History Fellow, SLNSW
Irish convicts and penal Catholicism: New evidence from the Therry Collection
Tuesday 23rd August, 2022 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Dr Matthew Grubits, Charles Sturt University
The Crisis of Captain Moonlite: Andrew George Scott in Australia
Tuesday 19th July, 2022 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Dr Tara McEvoy, Queen’s University, Belfast
Seamus Heaney in Australia
Tuesday 10th May, 2022 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Dr Jennifer McLaren
“This vile place”. An Irish Family in Trinidad in the Revolutionary Atlantic
Tuesday 22nd March, 2022 at 6:30pm (AEDT)
Dr Jimmy H. Yan, University of Melbourne
Contentious Routes: Ireland Questions, Radical Political Articulations and Settler Ambivalence in (White) Australia, c. 1909 – 1923
2021 Seminars
Tuesday 30th November, 2021 at 6:00pm (AEDT)
Dr Chloé Diskin-Holdaway, University of Melbourne
Becoming Aussie: Investigating accent change in the Irish community in Melbourne
Tuesday 28th September, 2021 at 7:30pm (AEST)
Prof. Fearghal McGarry and Dr Darragh Gannon, Queen’s University Belfast
Ireland 1922 : Independence, Partition, Civil War
Tuesday 14th September, 2021 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Prof. Emerit. Peter Kuch, University of Otago
The Sydney Theatre and the Irish play in the 1830s
Tuesday 10th August, 2021 at 6:30pm (AEST)
A/Prof. Katie Barclay, University of Adelaide
Men on Trial: Performing emotion, embodiment and identity in Ireland, 1800-45
Tuesday 29th June, 2021 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Dr Jeff Kildea, Dr Perry McIntyre and Dr Richard Reid
To Foster an Irish Spirit – writing the centenary history of the Irish National Association of Australasia
Tuesday 18th May, 2021 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Dr Sophie Cooper, Teaching Fellow in Irish History, University of Leicester
Women and the shaping of Irish identities in Melbourne 1857-1920
Tuesday 20th April, 2021 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Clive Probyn, Emeritus Professor of English, Monash University.
Anglo-Irish roads to Jonathan Swift
Tuesday 23rd March, 2021 at 12:00 noon (AEDT)
Prof. Jane McGaughey, Concordia University, Canada.
“These raving maniacs”: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Irish in Canadian Colonial Lunatic Asylums, 1832-1868
2020 Seminars
Tuesday 8th December, 2020 at 6:30pm (AEDT)
Prof Jeff Kildea, University of NSW
The Expulsion of Hugh Mahon
Tuesday 1st December, 2020 at 6:30pm (AEDT)
Dr Robert Lindsay
Vincent Hearnes and the cultural landscape of Irish Australia
Tuesday 17th November 2020 at 6:30pm (AEDT)
Dr Craig Pett
The death of Swift’s printer John Harding
Tuesday 13th October, 2020 at 6:30pm (AEDT)
Prof Sonja Tiernan, University of Otago
Commemorating controversy: Women and the shaping of Modern Ireland
Tuesday 1st September, 2020 at 6:30pm (AEST)
Prof Brian Bocking, University College Cork
A long-lost canvas: early Irish Buddhists in Melbourne
Tuesday 11th February, 2020 at 6:30pm (AEDT)
Dr Darragh Gannon, Queens University Belfast
Making Mannix global, 1919-1923: a Melbourne reader
UPCOMING SEMINARS
Details for any upcoming seminars are listed immediately below. Recordings and details of past seminars are provided further down the page.
Bound for Australia
24 June 2026. Amongst the possessions that Irish-born Anne Trotter packed in her trunk to start a new life in Australia was her needlework specimen book. Arriving in Port Phillip in 1844, Anne Trotter was one of many assisted migrants who, along with other members of her family, were deemed suitable emigrants to the colony. Donated to Museums Victoria by a descendant in 2014, Anne’s needlework book, which includes various plain sewing exercises and finely-stitched miniature shirts and a dress, provides an insight into the formal schooling provided to young working class girls in nineteenth century Ireland and the skills…
Read MoreNEWMAN COLLEGE
Seminars are held in the JABIRU ROOM in the Academic Centre at Newman College, Swanston Street, Carlton. After seminars the speaker usually joins any interested audience members for dinner at a local cafe or hotel. Queries about the seminar series may be directed to any of the MISS convenors: Philip Bull (La Trobe University), Frances Devlin-Glass (Deakin University), Dianne Hall (Victoria University), Elizabeth Malcolm (University of Melbourne), or Ronan McDonald (University of Melbourne)
PAST SEMINARS
In relation to the ocean
15 April 2025. Accounts of the Ocean in premodern periods are often analysed against the background of what was not yet known at the time: studies abound in premodern seafarings, premodern zoologies, premodern geographies, premodern cosmographies. We often investigate the early medieval worldview in terms of what we now know that they did not. However, any study of the Ocean in the modern milieu immediately reveals that our current relationship with the Ocean goes far beyond what we know and do not know about it. This paper will attempt to review a few accounts of the Ocean from early medieval…
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Claire Keegan’s (Re)past
18 March 2025. This paper focalizes provision in Claire Keegan’s fiction. Food transgresses boundaries between the natural and domestic worlds and problematizes comfortable notions of autonomy. Her work establishes a complex nexus of need and desire. I explore how scenes of consumption in Keegan’s short stories reveal economic, social, and moral vulnerabilities. This paper investigates how, through a fundamental preoccupation with desire and control, Keegan situates the dinner table as a space of reconstitution and manipulation.
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Yeats and the Poetry of ‘Romantic Ireland’
12 November 2025. Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone / It’s with O’Leary in the grave’. Yeats once called himself ‘the last Romantic’, but the curious thing about his famous refrain in ‘September 1913’ is that none of the Romantics he memorializes there are actually poets. Not Edward Fitzgerald, not Wolfe Tone, not Robert Emmet, and not John O’Leary himself. What was Yeats’s relationship to the Irish poets who were writing around the turn of the 19th century? How did Yeats regard Thomas Moore, the most famous of them, whose unofficial role as Ireland’s national poet Yeats would lay claim to? What…
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Irish-Native American solidarities
20 August 2025. This talk will explore how Irish people understand their historical links to settler colonialism and how valid or common it is for them to express solidarity with other colonised peoples, particularly Indigenous groups. Focusing on the relationship between the Irish and Native Americans, especially the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma since the 1990s, the talk will explore these expressions of solidarity. It draws on thousands of comments submitted by Irish donors to a GoFundMe page between 2020 and 2024.
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Furphy’s Fiction and Bulletin ‘Pars’
9 July 2025. From his first ‘pars’ (short contributions) for the Bulletin, Joseph Furphy’s curiosity about Aboriginal ethnology and languages is continuous and subtly counter-cultural. Joseph Furphy’s The Buln-Buln and the Brolga (1948) stages the meeting in Echuca between the urban authoress and the bushmen and their talk is a reminder of a frontier which by the early twentieth century was increasingly in retreat, vicious, secretive and remote.
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RECORDINGS
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