24th John Whyte Memorial Lecture

SPIRe, in collaboration with the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast, is pleased to host the:

The 24th John Whyte Memorial Lecture

In

University College, Belfield, Dublin

Room NT 1

6 pm on 19 November 2013

entitled:

“The War is over: the Conflict Unresolved?

The Consequences of the Good Friday Agreement after 15 years

To be presented by

Dr. Duncan Morrow, Director of Community Engagement, School of Criminology, Politics and Social Policy, University of Ulster

All are welcome.

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SPIRe Seminar Week 5: ‘The Independence Question in Scotland – Issues and Prospects.’

SPIRe’s week four seminar will feature Prof. Michael Keating, Professor of Politics and ESRC Senior Fellow at University of Aberdeen, this Thursady (Oct. 17th), 1-2pm in G317 speaking on  ‘The Independence Question in Scotland – Issues and Prospects.’

Abstract

The referendum on Scottish independence will take place in September 2014. Surveys indicate that only a minority of Scots support independence and this share has not changed significantly since the first SNP election victory in 2007. On the other hand, voters do not seem to be particularly frightened by the prospect of independence. Public and much of political opinion in England also seems relaxed about it. So neither the nationalists nor the unionists have won the political argument. In the course of the debate, the meaning of independence has been modified to include various common institutions with the rest of the United Kingdom. This ‘independence lite’ has converged with the option of ‘devolution max’, put forward by those who want more autonomy within the United Kingdom. Survey evidence shows that a majority of Scottish voters favour control of most domestic functions to be in the hands of the Scottish Parliament but are content to share foreign and defence policy and some other common matters. English political opinion remains wedded to the idea of the unitary state and reluctant to accept a federal system which would subordinate England to common federal institutions. There is more resentment over Scottish influence within this parliament than over Scottish self-government, so that English opinion might find Scottish independence easier to accept than federalization of the whole state.

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Dublin Political Theory Workshop ‘Compromise, Democracy, and Territory’

The next meeting of the Dublin Political Theory Workshop will take place on Friday 18 October at 2 p.m. in G316 of the Newman Building, UCD.

Cara Nine (UCC) will discuss her paper ‘Compromise, Democracy, and Territory’. Participants are asked to read the paper in advance of the session. Anyone who wishes to attend should please email John William Devine at (devinejw@tcd.ie), who will be happy to forward the paper to you.

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SPIRe Seminar Week 4: “From the Great Lakes to the Great Rift Valley: Does Strategic Economic Policy Explain the 2009 Malawi Election?”

SPIRe’s week four seminar will feature SPIRe’s Prof. Patrick Paul Walsh and Dr. Samuel Brazys presenting their paper co-authored with Peter Heaney of Irish Aid on “From the Great Lakes to the Great Rift Valley: Does Strategic Economic Policy Explain the 2009 Malawi Election?” from 13:00-14:00 Thursday,   October 10th in G317 Newman Building, UCD Belfield.  All are welcome.

Abstract

Ethnic voting cleavages have featured in a number of sub-Saharan African states since third wave democratization following the end of the Cold War.  While the causes and consequences of these cleavages are well studied, there have been surprisingly few attempts to understand if or how strategies of pan-ethnic coalition building based on distributiveeconomic policies could be employed to secure national electoral coalitions.  In this paper we examine if in the 2009 Malawian parliamentary elections the newly-formed national party,the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), led by the President Bingu wa Mutharika used its incumbent position to promote an economy policy based on food security in order toovercome traditional ethnic voting patterns and win a nation-wide electoral majority.  After presenting a formal model of using allocated economic policy to overcome ethnic bias andinduce vote-switching we use district-level data in a two-step approach to analyze if strategic allocation of national fertilizer subsidy problem contributed to the nation-wide electoral victory of the DPP.  

 

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Workshop on Economic Development with Wuhan University, China

SPIRe, along with the UCD College of Human Sciences, will host a workshop on economic development with scholars from China’s Wuhan University.  Details below:

UCD Global Lounge, Gerard Manley Hopkins Centre  (Downstairs of the Main Restaurant)

Tuesday 8 October, 9am-1pm

ALL WELCOME

Speakers

Professor Xibao Guo, WHU “Why Does China’s Economy Grow So fast?”

Professor Ron Davies, UCD “Foreign Bidders Going Once, Going Twice… Protection in Government Procurement Auction”

Professor Chusheng Ye, WHU “The Threshold Effects of Social Capital Affecting Household Welfare – An Explanation of the Poverty Trap in Rural China”

Professor Patrick Paul Walsh, UCD “Using Efficiency to Build Equity: The Case for Social Protection”

For further information: Prof. Patrick Paul Walsh (ppwalsh@ucd.ie)

Ms Yuanyuan Ma (yuanyuan.ma@ucd.ie)

wuhan

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SPIRe Seminar Week 3: “HIDDEN HISTORIES: REVISITING THE SPIRIT OF 1913”

The week three seminar event will be a conference put on by SPIRe’s Institute for British-Irish Studies (IBIS) themed “HIDDEN HISTORIES: REVISITING THE SPIRIT OF 1913” with details below.  Please note the RSVP.

image001

 

RSVP: ibis@ucd.ie
Limited Space Available

Session 1: Setting the Context
9.30–11.00
Chair: Paul Gillespie

Myrtle Hill: What did Women Want? Female Activism in a Decade of Disruption

Paddy Smyth: The impossible Mr Larkin

John Cunningham: ‘The workers are getting an insolent manner of late’: Labour in the West, c 1913

Peter Collins: The Dublin Lockout – The View from the North

 

Coffee Break

11:00-11:15       

************

‘Living the Lockout’ performed by Laura Murray

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Session Two: Positions and Personas
11:30-13:00
Chair: Bronagh Hinds

Mary Muldowney: Lockout 1913: Public Events, Private Lives

Margaret Ward: Militant militants: Hanna and Frank Sheehy Skeffington and the Cause of Women and the Cause of Labour

Angelina Cox: Rosie Hackett: The Rediscovery of a Forgotten History

Felix Larkin: Hidden Lives of William Martin Murphy

13:00-14:00

Lunch and Tour of Little Museum

Session Three: Reflections on Commemoration
14:00-15:30
Chair: John Coakley

Keynote Speaker: Joan Burton, TD – Minister for Social Protection

Padraig Yeates: Commemorating Whose Past – And for What?

Jack O’Connor: Reflections on the Contemporary Context

Theresa Moriarty: Fighting Forgetting

 

Closing Remarks
15:30

IBIS is grateful to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the funding of this conference

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SPEAKERS

Joan Burton was appointed Minister for Social Protection in March 2011. She was the first TD to be re-elected in the general election after topping the poll in Dublin West.

She is Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and former Finance spokesman for the party.
She was first elected to the Dáil in 1992. In the 1992-97 Government she was Minister of State for Development Cooperation and Overseas Aid (‘94 to ’97).  As Minister of State in Foreign Affairs, she initiated a dramatic expansion of Ireland’s Aid Programme in Africa.  As Minister of State in Social Welfare (’92 to ’94) she initiated a series of Welfare to Work and Education initiatives for lone parents and families on Social Welfare.

Joan Burton is a chartered accountant by profession. She trained and worked with PriceWaterhouse in Dublin prior to becoming a Senior Lecturer in the Dublin Institute of Technology.

 

Dr Peter Collins is Senior Lecturer in history at St Mary’s University College, Belfast. His doctoral thesis was on the Belfast Trades Council 1881-1921. Among his publications are Who fears to speak of ’98 and Nationalism and Unionism.

 

Angelina Cox is a final year student in Trinity College Dublin, studying law and political science. In October 2012 she initiated the successful campaign to name the new Liffey Bridge in memory of Rosie Hackett.

 

John Cunningham is a Lecturer in History at NUI Galway, where he teaches courses on labour history, on local history and on modern Ireland. He is joint editor of Saothar: journal of the Irish Labour History Society. His publications include a history of the ASTI, a social history of nineteenth century Galway, and Labour in the west of Ireland, 1890-1914.

 

Myrtle Hill is a former Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies at Queen’s University Belfast and researches and writes on Irish social, religious and women’s history. Publications include a history of Women in Twentieth-Century Ireland, book chapters and journal articles on the Irish Suffrage movement, 19th century female missionaries and Disability and Conflict. She has recently carried out research on Adult Access to Higher Education and is active in the wider women’s and community relations sectors in the north of Ireland.

 

Felix M. Larkin is chairman of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland. A retired public servant, he now works as a historian and freelance writer. He has published extensively on the press in late 19th and early 20th century Ireland. Lawyers, the law and history, a volume of essays which he co-edited (with Professor Norma Dawson, of QUB) for the Irish Legal History Society, was published this summer.

 

Theresa Moriarty is an independent researcher. Among her publications are biographical studies of Mary Galway, Delia Larkin; trade unionism in the first world war and Who will look after the kiddies? Household strategies and collective action during the Dublin lockout 1913.

 

Dr. Mary Muldowney is currently engaged (with Dr. Ida Milne) in an oral history project about the legacy of the 1913 Dublin Lockout. She is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Centre for Contemporary History in Trinity College Dublin and is one of the founder members of the Oral History Network of Ireland. She is also the author of two books: ‘The Second World War and Irish Women’ and ‘Trinity and Its Neighbours: An Oral History’ as well as journal articles and a range of other publications. Her current research includes the history of workers in the Irish railway industry, particularly women and an oral history of the pro-choice movement in Ireland. She is a member of the Heritage Council’s National Consultative Panel for Cultural Heritage and Global Change: a new challenge for Europe. Mary is also an adult education consultant for several trade unions and a faculty member with Student International Training in Ireland.

 

Laura Murray is currently performing as Mary in the Dublin Tenement Experience: Living the Lockout. Previous work with ANU includes: Laundry (Dublin Theatre Festival 2011), winner of the Best Production Award, Irish Times, Irish Theatre Awards and The Boys of Foley Street (Dublin Theatre Festival 2012), winner Best Theatrical Production of the Year Award 2012.

 

Jack O’Connor has been General President of SIPTU since 2003, having been re-elected in 2006 for a second term and in 2011 for a third term.

He was also President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) from July 2009 until July 2011 and served previously as Vice President from mid-2007.  He has been a member of the Executive Council of Congress since 2001.  Born in 1957, O’Connor is a native of North County Dublin. Employed in the agriculture, construction and local authority sectors, he was a trade union activist before becoming a full-time Branch Secretary of the former Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland in 1980. On the formation of SIPTU in January 1990, he was appointed Regional Secretary in the Midlands and in 1997 he took on the additional responsibility for the Union’s South-East Region. In contrast to his earlier trade union experience, the workers he represented during this phase of his union involvement were predominantly employed in the private sector. He was elected as SIPTU’s Vice President in 2000.

 

Paddy Smyth is the Irish Times Foreign Policy Editor, and  Editor of its ‘Century’ series of supplements  on the Decade of Revolution including the recent Locked Out. He is a former Washington and Europe correspondent.

 

Dr Margaret Ward is the Director of the Women’s Resource and Development Agency, a regional organization for women based in Belfast. She is also a feminist historian. Her publications include Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish nationalism, published in 1983, the first major study of Irish nationalist women; biographies of Maud Gonne and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and (with Louise Ryan) Irish Women and nationalism: soldiers, new women and wicked hags and Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens.

 

Padraig Yeates is a journalist and author, whose books include Lockout: Dublin 1913, A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914-1918 and A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919-1921.

 

CHAIRS

 

Professor John Coakley is a professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin. He is also the founding director and research director of IBIS. He has edited or co-edited: Changing shades of orange and green: redefining the union and the nation in contemporary Ireland (UCD Press, 2002); The territorial management of ethnic conflict (2nd ed., Frank Cass, 2003); From political violence to negotiated settlement: the winding path to peace in twentieth century Ireland (UCD Press, 2004); Politics in the Republic of Ireland (4th ed., Routledge, 2004); and Crossing the Border, New relationships between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Irish Academic Press, 2007).

 

Dr Paul Gillespie is a journalist, academic and author.  As a columnist and leader writer for The Irish Times and a researcher he has a special interest in European politics and political identities, British-Irish relations, comparative regionalism, EuroMed affairs and Europe-Asian relations. He is a senior research fellow adjunct at University College Dublin’s School of Politics and International Relations. He edited Britain’s European Question, The Issues for Ireland (Dublin 1996) and Blair’s Britain, England’s Europe (Dublin 2000).

 

Bronagh Hinds is the Chairperson of IBIS and a Senior Associate with DemocraShe. She is an Honorary Senior Research Practitioner in Queen’s University School of Law, a member of the Gender Advisory Panel of the Office of the First and deputy First Minister and on the Board of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. Bronagh co-founded the Women’s Coalition and was in the negotiations for the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. During her career she has been a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Governance at Queen’s and a director of several NGOs. A former Deputy Chief Commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, she also served as a Commissioner in the local government sector and as the Northern Ireland Commissioner for the UK Women’s National Commission.   Bronagh was awarded UK Woman of Europe in 1998 and the International Women’s Democracy Centre Global Democracy Award in 2002.

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