This is my farewell message to you as I’ve come to the end of my five-year term as Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve in this role. I’m delighted to be handing the institute over to the steady hands of my colleague Patrick Geoghegan from Trinity’s Department of History. In July, Patrick - a leading scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland - will lead an international conference at the Hub on ‘Liberty, Democracy, and the Struggle for Human Rights’ to mark 250 years since the birth of Daniel O’Connell, a key anniversary tabled in the current Programme for Government.

Patrick Geoghegan and Eve Patten

Patrick is also one of several Arts and Humanities scholars, alongside Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, who helped shape the documentary ‘From that Small Island’, currently airing on RTÉ. This June, we were honoured to host an early screening of the film, which also builds on research carried out in the Hub by DFA-funded fellow Dr Caoimhe Whelan.

Chancellor Mary McAleese in 'From That Small Island - The story of the Irish'

It has been a busy final term. Back in May, we marked 10 years of our Behind the Headlines discussion series (supported by the John Pollard Foundation) with two sold-out panel conversations with experts on archives and the future of journalism. The anniversary dovetailed with our Annual Humanities Horizons Lecture, given this year by Bruce Shapiro, Executive Director of Columbia University’s Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, who addressed with chilling insight the spectacle of violence and the impact of trauma in today’s news. We were pleased to partner on this occasion with Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Big Ideas’ programme to bring this signature lecture to a wide global audience. Our collaboration with NearFM Radio, meanwhile, for a series of talks on Dublin’s Hidden Histories-- funded by Coimisiún na Meán-- proved extremely popular and highlighted some of the fascinating research coming from our Arts and Humanities Schools. Earlier in the year, we also celebrated the new Eavan Boland Library with our dedicated window display on Fellows’ Square.

Bruce Shapiro

 

As always, our Early Career Researchers have made a powerful contribution to our Hub community, not only through their brilliant academic work but also in their wider public engagement, from poster projects and community outreach to award-winning publications from writers including Rafael Silva Mendes, Yang Hao, and Gustav Parker Hibbett. We’ve continued to benefit from our distinguished visiting fellows, along with Rooney Writer Fellow Mark O’Connell, and in 2025-26 will welcome 14 new visiting fellows from all over the world. Thanks to the generosity of Rosemary O’Mahony, we’re also launching a new fellowship dedicated to music-related research, and we’re building further on our partnership with Rough Magic theatre company.

Early Career Researcher Poster showcase

 

This summer, our Arts and Humanities Schools will run a series of conferences at the Hub, including the 46th Annual Meeting of the International T. S. Eliot Society, before we return to a full programme of activities in the autumn, kicking off in September with our third Arts and Humanities Research Festival.

I’ll sign off with a heartfelt thank you to all my colleagues and the many friends of the Hub who have made the last five years work so well. I took over this role at the beginning of the pandemic, and we have come out of that challenge stronger than ever as a research community. Above all, my gratitude to the wonderful team at the Hub, past and present, for their fortitude, professionalism, and fun behind the scenes. Trinity is lucky to have you.

Enjoy the summer, everyone.

Eve Patten, Director Trinity Long Room Hub

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