14 Research Incentive Grants awarded to researchers from across the Hub partner Schools
In order to support and incentivise innovative, collaborative and interdisciplinary research in the Arts & Humanities, the Trinity Long Room Hub has awarded 14 grants to researchers from across the Hub partner Schools. These awards of up to €4,000 per project, made under the competitive annual Research Incentive Scheme, will enable a range of research and dissemination activities linked to the strategic objectives and research priorities of the Institute. Many of the projects, all of which will be undertaken during 2013-4, are linked to the university’s research themes on Identities in Transformation and the Digital Humanities. The research projects supported are as follows:
From Sarajevo to Troy: Civilians under Siege
The violence displayed during the artillery bombardment of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996 demonstrated the modernity of siege warfare. Yet sieges are a form of warfare with deep historical roots, going back to the founding epic of western warfare, Homer’s Iliad. As centres of economic, military, political and cultural power, towns and cities are logical targets of attack. But because their mode of defence is static, this produces a type of warfare that stands in contrast to the clash of armies in the field.
RIS funding was allocated to enable a workshop to examine the effects of siege warfare on civilian populations exploring topics such as the various roles of civilians during sieges, the laws and customs of siege warfare, the broader symbolic meanings of sieges for the wars during which they take place and their social and economic repercussions and place in historical memory. Working back through time from Sarajevo, this interdisciplinary workshop, in early 2014, will seek to cover sieges during the Second and First World Wars, the long nineteenth century, 17th century Ireland and Germany, and the siege of Jerusalem by the First Crusade. It will end with Troy.
Prof John Horne, Centre for War Studies, School of Histories and Humanities
Religion and Memory: The 500th Anniversary of the Reformation
2017 will be the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s challenge to established authority within the Church and we are mid-way through the Luther Decade, dedicated to exploring the significance of the Reformation that was launched in 1517. Funding has been allocated to enable a workshop in April 2014 that would link the current political and public debate of history and commemoration in Ireland to international debates around the anniversary of the Reformation.
Controversial arguments persist that contemporary hyper-pluralism and the triumph of consumer capitalism are the direct but unintended consequences of the Reformation. Both of these issues will be discussed in the context of the ‘commemoration’ of the Reformation. This provides the opportunity for analysis of the evolving relationship between religion, collective memory and modernity. It is suggested that religion can be conceived of as a chain of collective memory in modern societies. Since capitalist societies are marked by the disintegration of collective memory, we witness historical transformations of religions in modernity. And yet, that very modernity was arguably constructed from the historical transformations of religions we call the Reformation. Put simply, 500 years on, there is still much to discuss.
Dr Graeme Murdock, Centre for Early Modern History, School of Histories and Humanities
Popular Violence in early modern Britain and Ireland
The use of the term ‘British’ became more frequent over the course of the seventeenth century in the Atlantic Archipelago. In areas of cultural difference (such as Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall), this new identity brought a clash of core ‘British’ versus peripheral ‘Celtic’ identity and led to the outbreak of popular violence.
Building on the success of the 1641 Depositions Project and CULTURA (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, the Irish Research Council, and EU Framework Programme 7), RIS funding was allocated towards the organisation of a conference in 2014 which is exploring popular violence in early modern Britain and Ireland and will bring together historians, legal experts, linguists and literary scholars who investigate aspects of popular violence across a wide geographical and chronological perspective.
Prof Jane Ohlmeyer, Centre for Early Modern History and the Centre for War Studies, School of Histories and Humanities
Cities of Translation: Dublin, New York, Berlin
The urban lifestyle is a relatively recent phenomenon. Cities generate a recognisable national identity and have effectively become the cauldrons of contemporary culture and thought. Cities often have a strange relationship with their nations at large, built on a symbiotic need and, often, reciprocal contempt. An interdisciplinary conference will be organised in 2014 to analyse three cities in comparison – Dublin, Berlin and New York – as places of translation, to be understood in the wider sense of moving between languages, cultures, social classes, ethnic groups, topographies, and literatures. This research supports a multidimensional examination of identity at work in the urban landscape.
Dr Peter Arnds, Centre for Literary Translation, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies
The Augustan Space: A Bi-Millennium Celebration (Rome AD 14 – Dublin 2014)
August 2014 will mark the bi-millennial anniversary of the death of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, in AD 14. Funding was awarded for a three-day conference convening, for the first time in Dublin, all distinguished members of the international Augustan Poetry Network (‘Réseau international de recherche et de formation à la recherche sur la poésie augustéenne’), of which Trinity College has been a participating institution since 2002. The questions to be addressed, with a focus on ‘space’ in Augustan poetry, are highly relevant to contemporary debates such as tradition and transformation; monumentalisation of history and destabilising power of literature; nationalism and inclusiveness. While promoting innovative research on textual culture, the conference will also enable interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Augustus’ programme and its impact on the formation of European identities. This will be one of the main academic events in Ireland and the UK to link with the city of Rome in the commemoration of Augustus.
Prof Anna Chahoud, Department of Classics, School of Histories and Humanities
The Ethics of Research into Sexualised Violence in Conflict
Funding was allocated to assist with the start of a new research project on ‘Sexualised Violence and Warfare: Transformations of Identity in Conflict and Post-conflict Societies’ linked to Trinity’s research theme on Identities in Transformation. Research on sexualised violence in conflict is a comparatively new area and existing work suggests that the perpetration of such violence is often linked to the politics of identity, with sexualised violence deployed to subvert and transform personal and communal identities. However, researching sexualised violence in conflict necessitates prior consideration of the ethics of doing such work. This is the rather under-researched aspect of this area that is the focus of this research stage.
Dr David Tombs and Dr Gillian Wylie, Confederal School of Religions, Theology and Ecumenics
Down these Green Streets: An Irish Crime Fiction Symposium
Studies of Irish crime fiction are on the cusp of becoming a key strand in the study of contemporary Irish culture, here and abroad. A symposium to develop this research field will be held in November 2013 in conjunction with the Glucksman Ireland House of New York University. A focus of this research collaboration is the argument that the long and complex history of relations between Ireland and America is finding new forms of expression in crime writing.
Dr Brian Cliff, School of English
Early Irish Theatre, c. 1680-1820
Funding was allocated to develop a digital humanities resource to host scholarly editions of eighteenth-century plays by Irish playwrights, many of which are not widely available, if at all. It will complement existing research in eighteenth-century drama and contribute to the emerging debate over the substance and shape of the Irish Enlightenment.
Dr David O’Shaughnessy, School of English
Composition in the 21st Century
RIS funding was allocated towards the organisation of a major international conference on music composition in March 2014 by Trinity’s Centre for Music Composition in partnership with the National Concert Hall and New Music Dublin Festival, and the publication of the proceedings. Sir Harrison Birtwistle will be the distinguished keynote speaker at this event.
Dr Evangelia Rigaki, Music Composition Centre, School of Drama, Film and Music
The James Lydon Lectures in Medieval History and Culture
It was in the millennium between the Fall of Rome and the Reformation—commonly known as the ‘Middle Ages’—that Europe emerged as something more than an idea, and many of the institutions, cultural forces and political ideas we associate with the ‘modern’ world were born. What is the continuing relevance of this era for contemporary Irish and European society? And how are we to understand medieval history and culture on its own terms, rather than through the distorting prism of presentist concerns? Funding was allocated to assist with the establishment of the biennial James Lydon Lectures in Medieval History and Culture, which seek to explore some of the most urgent and problematic questions facing medieval scholarship today.
The series is named in memory of James F. Lydon FTCD MRIA, formerly Lecky Professor of History in Trinity College Dublin (1980–1993), who died on 25 June 2013. The inaugural Lydon Lecturer is Professor John Gillingham (Emeritus, London School of Economics), who will speak on the subject of ‘War, Enslavement and Chivalry in European History’.
Dr Peter Crooks, Medieval History Research Centre, School of Histories and Humanities.
The Letters and Papers of Oliver Cromwell
Funding was allocated to help support a virtual, shared research and editing environment for an international team of scholars preparing a critical edition of the writings and papers of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) for publication by Oxford University Press in 2015. Cromwell’s letters and speeches are of fundamental importance for any understanding of the man himself, of the nature of the wars in England, Scotland and Ireland, of the political and religious struggles of the 1630s, 1640s and 1650s, and of the nature of the British Commonwealth and Protectorate.
Dr Micheál O Siochrú, Centre for Early Modern History, School of Histories and Humanities
The History of the City of Dublin Research Group
Funding was allocated to the History of the City of Dublin Research Group towards a project which is seeking to construct, through a variety of interactions over time, a strategic agenda for future research on the post-medieval history of Dublin.
Prof David Dickson, Centre for Irish-Scottish and Comparative Studies, School of Histories and Humanities
12th Century Historiography at the Fringes of Europe
Funding was provided to enable a workshop in 2014 that will bring together scholars from a range of specialities to discuss the treatment of peoples and events at the fringes of Europe in the sources for the twelfth century. Often written by persons in the physical or figurative 'centre', how reliable are they as sources for the 'periphery'? Participants will highlight some of the methodological difficulties experienced when trying to exploit such limited and potentially problematic material, asking if there is a way of sensitively, yet confidently writing a history of the period, and if so, what form the history should take. Its aim will be to showcase the multiplicity of approaches which can be successfully harnessed in order to benefit as much as possible from the available sources, while allowing for their shortcomings, or even embracing their deficits as historical material in themselves.
Dr Léan Ni Chléirigh, Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Medieval History Research Centre, School of Histories and Humanities
WechselWirkungen: Austria-Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Balkan Region, 1878-1918
Funding was allocated to assist the publication of an anthology of essays in English and German which explores the impact of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg rule on the Bosnia-Herzegovina region in the period 1878-1918. Previous studies have neglected this period focusing instead on the Yugoslav Succession Wars of the last decade of the 20th century. This edited volume will make the results of an informal academic network on Bosnia-Herzegovina visible and contribute significantly to existing research into shifting identities of this troubled region, including that undertaken at Trinity.
Dr Clemens Ruthner, Centre for European Studies, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies
Funding Bodies
