The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies invites you to join us for an inspiring conversation between two trailblazing female academics, Professors Emeritae Eda Sagarra and Corinna Salvadori Lonergan. Together they will reflect on their careers in academia and public life, the evolution of Trinity over the decades, and their hopes for the future of higher education. This discussion will particularly resonate with students, early‑career researchers, and an audience interested in Ireland’s social history, providing an opportunity to learn from two inspirational women whose lives and careers span decades of societal transformation from the later half of the twentieth-century to today.

Eda Sagarra is an Emerita Professor of German at Trinity College Dublin, she joined the department in 1975, and in 1981 was elected as the university's Registrar, the first woman to hold such a post in any university in these islands. Professor Sagarra is a significant and influential figure in Irish and European academic policy-making, contributing to the early development of the Erasmus scheme, and later became the first chairperson of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. Her memoir Living With My Century was published in 2022.

Corinna Salvadori Lonergan is an Emeritus Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin where she was in charge of the Italian Department from the mid-1960s until 2001. Professor Lonergan is a Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana and an honorary member of the Society for Italian Studies and honorary President of the Associazione Internazionale Professori d’Italiano. She has published on Dante, Lorenzo de’ Medici (some of whose work she has translated), Michelangelo’s poetry, Ariosto, as well as on Beckett, William Roscoe and more recently, on Dante and Irish authors, Beckett, Heaney and O’Donoghue.

Tickets for this event will be available strictly on a first come, first served basis. The conversation will be recorded and shared shortly after the event.

Graphic with the words Languages 250 at Trinity (1776-2026).

This event forms part of the 'Languages 250 at Trinity (1776-2026)' programme, throughout 2026, the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies is marking the 250th anniversary of the establishment of Modern Languages in Trinity College Dublin.