About the Irish Department in Trinity College

Location

The School of Irish is located on campus in the Arts Building (rooms 4055-4063). It holds microfilm copies of the Irish Folklore Commission's Collection of Irish Folklore Manuscripts. The College's important collection of Irish manuscripts (College Library) is accessible to research students, while the National Library of Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy (R.I.A.) both housing extensive collections of manuscripts, are a short walk away.

Degrees and Number of Students

Early and Modern Irish are taught as two separate subjects in the School. They may be taken together as a single honor course in 'Early and Modern Irish' (BA, 4 years, Courses) or combined individually with a number of other subjects as part of a 'Two Subject Moderatorship' (BA, 4 years). Research students may read for an M. Litt. (1-3 years) or a PhD (2-5 years) under the supervision of staff members. The Department also runs two taught post-graduate courses, the Diploma in Old Irish and the M.Phil. in Early Irish. The Diploma will run in 2013/14 and the M.Phil. will run in 2014/15.

At present (2012-2013) there are nearly 130 under-graduate students on books, with more than 25 reading Early and Modern Irish, nearly 80 reading Modern Irish in TSM and 6 reading Irish in Computer Science, linguistics and a language. There are 19 reading Irish Studies with Irish-language options. In addition there are several one-year and one-semester students from abroad.