This year’s Irish Conference of Medievalists is taking place at University College Dublin between the 1st and 3rd of July. It features a huge range of speakers, discussing a variety of topics and you will be hard pressed to find a better conference line up this summer. For delegates who sign up by June 1st, the fee is €40, with a student/pensioner/unwaged rate of €20. This registration fee will also cover refreshments as well as the ICM receptions. You can see the full list of speakers and their chosen subjects below. As you can see its very extensive!
More information on the conference can be found here, while a detailed programme of events can be viewed here.
Wednesday July 1st
11:30 – 13:00 Sessions 1a, b, c
SESSION 1A (A109)
Elise Alonzi (Arizona State University) To sample the Salmon of Knowledge: historical and archaeological evidence for the impact of dietary practices on the biogeochemistry of medieval Irish populations
Gill Boazman (UCC) The Conaille Muirthemne kings and Faughart, Co. Louth: the material culture of image projection
Christina Wade (TCD) Power in death: an examination of Viking grave goods in Dublin
Session 1B (A106)
Nathan Millin (UCD) The hammer of God: an early Irish exposition on Pontius Pilate
Catherine Coffey (QUB) Medieval spin doctors: an analysis of the interplay between political and salvation history in the Annolied
Jennifer Farrell (University of Exeter) Women and the supernatural: reflections of patronage and social identity in Romance and History?
SESSION 1C (K114)
Rhiannon Carey Bates (TCD) The Anglicisation of the Irish episcopate: the first English bishops of Irish dioceses
Maeve B. Callan (Simpson College) The secret of Ledrede’s success: how Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, overcame months of resistance to effect the British Isles’ first execution at the stake (Kilkenny, 1324)
Brian Coleman (TCD) The gentry of English Ireland and ‘self-government at the kings’s command’
Sessions 2a, b, c 14.00-13.30
SESSION 2A (A109) Panel: Medieval Carlow / Sponsored by Carlow County Museum supported by Carlow County Council
Linda Doran (UCD) Vikings in the Carlow Corridor
Cóilín Ó Drisceoil (Kilkenny Archaeology/ Maynooth University) William and Isabella Marshal in Ireland
Margaret Murphy (Carlow College) Medieval Carlow: origins, growth and decline
SESSION 2B (A106)
Margaret Smith (Saint Louis University) Kinship and kingship: identity and authority in the Book of Lismore
Thomas Herron (East Carolina University) Centering Spenser: a digital resource for Kilcolman Castle: reception and new directions in research
Catherine Emerson (NUI Galway) Who were the Irish readers of medieval French early printed books?
SESSION 2C (K114) Panel: Churches, monasteries and social-economic change
Paul Stevens (UCD) Archaeology, Marxism, and the early Irish Church: a preliminary review of the evidence for production on early Irish ‘monasteries’
Roy Flechner (UCD) Converting the Isles: some preliminary conclusions from an international research network
Gabor Thomas (University of Reading) Places of power and economic intensification in Anglo-Saxon England: new archaeological perspectives from Lyminge, Kent
16:00-17:30 Sessions 3a, b, c
SESSION 3A (A109) Panel: Medieval castles & their communities
Kieran O’Conor (NUI Galway) New research at Rindoon Castle, Co. Roscommon
Patrick J. Goode (Lea Castle Conservation Group) The O’Dempseys of Clanmalier and Lea Castle
Karen Dempsey (UCD) Lea Castle, Co. Laois: some initial observations….
SESSION 3B (A106)
David Woods (UCC) An unpublished follis of Tiberius Apsimar: a siege-issue from Tyana c. 708?
Emmett O’Byrne (IT Carlow) Cormac Ua Maelsechlainn (d. 1239)~warrior of the Irish resurgence
Stephen Hewer (TCD) The free Gaelic man in English Ireland, 1252-1327
SESSION 3C (K114)
Ksenia Kudenko (UCC) The survival of áer ‘satire’ in Irish Saints’ Lives
Colin Ireland (Arcadia University) What constitutes the learning of a sapiens? The case of Cenn Fáelad
Pamela O’Neill (University of New South Wales/ University of Sydney) Adomnán of Iona: lawmaker or lawyer?
Thursday July 2nd
9:30 – 11:00 Sessions 4a, b, c
SESSION 4A (A109) Panel: Political communities and civil societies in the Atlantic Arc: understanding Ireland in its European context
Patrick Gleeson (NUI Galway) Framing scales of community and civil society in the Atlantic Arc: perspectives from early medieval Ireland
Álvaro Carvajal Castro (UCD) Modelling local political communities in early medieval Ireland: a comparative perspective from NW Iberia
Russell Ó Ríagáin (University of Cambridge) Kings in a contact zone: the shifting configurations of social power in the early medieval North Channel
SESSION 4B (A106)
Freya Verstraten Veach (University of Hull) How Irish was the Earl of Ulster? An excursion into the genealogies of the de Burghs and Uí Chonchobhair
Catherine Swift (Mary Immaculate College, UL) Paddy le Carpenter and surname formation in the mid-West
Caren Mulcahy (UCD) The Husseys, Barons of Galtrim, a county gentry family of Meath, 1170-1540
Session 4C
Michael Clarke (NUI Galway) The Irish Liber Hymnorum and its affinities
Mariamne Briggs (University of Edinburgh) What’s in a tale title: Togail na Tebe as an editorial construction
Gregory Hulsman (TCD) The evolution of a Lollard book of instruction: a case study
11:30 – 11:30 Sessions 5a, b, c
SESSION 5A (A109)
Emma Anderson (University of Edinburgh/ University of Glasgow) The musical landcsape: audience, sound and boundary in early Irish literature
Ann Buckley (TCD/ QUB) Varieties of song in medieval Ireland
Siobhán Barrett (Maynooth University) Keening in the poems of Bláthmac
SESSION 5B (A106) Panel: Hagiography and historiography
Alban Gautier (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale) Vita or res gestae? Asser’s Life of Alfred between hagiography and historiography
Denis Casey (Maynooth University) Angry saints: (un)sympathetic readings of Irish hagiography Jean-
Michel Picard (UCD) Hagiography and historiography: Columbanus saviour of European civilisation
SESSION 5C (K114)
Rebecca Boyd (Independent Scholar) New questions for old buildings: exploring ‘home’ in Viking Ireland
Karen Dempsey (UCD) Chamber-towers and their ‘private’ spaces: indentifying and understanding the ‘living-room’
Lynda Mulvin (UCD) Form follows function: change in plans of Irish medieval friary architecture
14:00 – 15:30 Sessions 6a, b, c
SESSION 6A (A109) Panel: Crusaders behaving badly
Léan Ní Chléirigh (UCD) ‘For devotion alone, and not to obtain money or honours’: evidence for disqualification of crusaders from spiritual benefits of crusading in the early narratives of the crusades
Kathryn Hurlock (Manchester Metropolitan University) The use and abuse of the crusading ideal by England’s kings
Paolo Virtuani (UCD) Two alleged Hospitaller murders: a comparative analysis
SESSION 6B (A106)
Elaine Pereira Farrell (Utrecht University/ UCD) The recycling of the Penitential of Cummean in the Excarpsus Cummeani
Máirín Mac Carron (NUI Galway) Bede’s Anno Mundi chronology and Irish computistica
Nicole Volmering (DIAS) The adaptation of the Visio Sancti Pauli in the West: the evidence of Redaction VI
SESSION 6C (K114) Panel: Aspects of the Middle Ages in County Wexford/ Sponsored by Wexford County Council
Charles Doherty (RSAI) The ‘life’ of St Abbán: an alternative reading
Linda Doran (UCD) Medieval New Ross
Bernard Browne (RSAI) Old Ross the town that never was
16:00-17:30 Sessions 7a, b, c
SESSION 7A (A109)
Laura McCloskey (TCD) Celtic stylistic influence in early medieval Irish illuminated manuscripts: reflections of the Roman Empire
Robert D. Stevick (University of Washington) Morphogenesis of Macregol Gospels evangelist pages: what the eye doesn’t see
Rosemary Power (NUI Galway) Iona~crosses and shadows
SESSION 7B (A106)
Cherie N. Peters (TCD) Who wore the trousers in early medieval Ireland?
Santa Jansone (Independent Scholar) Dress in Scandinavia in the 7th – 8th century: possible reconstructions
Artis Aboltins (Independent Scholar) Military gear of the Scandinavian military elite during the Vendel period and possible ways of using it on the battlefield
SESSION 7C (K114) Panel: The after-lives of St Columba: new approaches
Neil McGuigan (University of St Andrews) Columba and the Scotification of Cuthbert
Victoria Whitworth (University of the Highlands and Islands) Adoring lions and glamorous bosses: a sculptural hint at the cult of St Columba in tenth-century York
Russell Ó Ríagáin (University of Cambridge) (Post)Colonial Columba
Friday July 3rd
11:30 – 13:00 Sessions 8a, b, c
SESSION 8A Panel: Perspectives on medieval Ireland and modernity
Tara Kelly (Independent Scholar) Purchasing the past: consumers of Irish facsimile jewellery and metalwork
Colleen M. Thomas (TCD) The ‘Irish’ crosses of Earley & Powell in the 1860s
Niamh NicGhabhann (UL) Medieval Ireland and the Shannon Hydro-Electric Scheme: reconstructing the past in independent Ireland
SESSION 8B
Duncan Sneddon (University of Edinburgh) Would you Adam and Eve it? Women as givers of advice in Vita Sancti Columbae
Marion Deane (Independent Scholar) Buile Suibhne (The Frenzy of Sweeney). Symptom as desire: an appraisal of Sweeney’s madness
Jake Ryan (UCD) The Auchinlech Manuscript: a how-to guide for medieval manliness
SESSION 8C Panel: Projects in Celtic lexicography
Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh (University of Glasgow) DASG, Faclair na Gàidhlig, and their relevance to the study of medieval Gaelic G.
Angharad Fychan (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies) The University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language
Sharon Arbuthnot (QUB) Revisiting and repurposing eDIL
15:00 Sessions 9a, b, c
SESSION 9A (A109) Please note this session, only, will run 14:00 – 15:30
Lenore Fischer (Independent Scholar) Brian Boraimhe, his evolving legend
Stephen H. Harrison (University of Glasgow) Between tide and text: a new approach to the Battle of Clontarf
SESSION 9B (A106)
Alexander O’Hara (Austrian Academy of Sciences) Columbanus ad locum: the establishment of the monastic foundations
Gavin Dillon (Independent Scholar) ‘Claiming ground’ a response to the rise of monastic empires
SESSION 9C (K114) Panel: Irish medievalists: writings and legacies I
Nollaig Ó Muraíle (NUI Galway) Items of correspondence of John O Donovan preserved in the Royal Irish Academy
Jamie Blake Knox (TCD) James Henderson Todd and the origins of the early Irish Church
15:00 – 16:00 sessions 10a, b
SESSION 10A (A106)
Claire Collins (UCD) Saint Patrick vs. Cenn Cruaich in the Patrician Lives: elements of narrative
Grigoriy G. Grigoryev (Russian State University) The symbolic meaning of St Patrick’s Crozier (‘Staff of Jesus’) and its role in St Patrick’s hagiography
SESSION 10B (K114) Panel: Irish medievalists: writings and legacies II
Dáibhí Ó Cróinin (NUI Galway) Some new letters of Whitley Stokes in Leipzig
Mairead Carew (UCD) Adolf Mahr: a Celtic archaeologist in 1930s Ireland
