June 2016 NUI Galway Conference to Focus on War and Revolution in the West

NUI Galway will hold a free public conference on the theme of ‘Place, Identity, Conflict: War and Revolution in the West of Ireland, 1913-18’ on 1-2 July. The conference will be hosted by the University’s 1916-Scholar-in-Residence, Dr Conor McNamara and take place in the Aula Maxima.

The conference will showcase the most up-to-date research on the period, and will feature speakers from a number of universities, as well as from civic and community groups in the west.

Dr John Cunningham, a historian at NUI Galway, said: “There will be a particular focus over the two days on the  newly-available resources – especially digital resources – which have been transforming our understanding both of the impact of the First World War on Irish society, and the pressures that drove a generation into revolution. The level of detail in military pension applications and in compensation claims, for example, can be quite remarkable, and they assist in providing a rounded picture of the impact of conflict at the level of the family and the local community.”

The conference programme includes talks on contrasting perspectives of the period from the world of the ‘big house', the lives of rural women, the Irish in America, the urban poor and a range of competing narratives. The crucial issues of land, recruitment to the military, the emergence of the Irish Volunteers, the Irish language, the Easter Rising in Galway and the social history of ordinary peoples’ lives will all be examined.

In association with the conference, there will also be an event in the Galway Mechanics Institute on Middle Street on Friday, 1 July at 9 pm, entitled ‘Songs of Labour, War and Revolution’, curated by Therese McIntyre of the 1916 Song project.

For a full programme email history@nuigalway.ie.

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