The finale in a series of events exploring the partition of Ireland, this online panel discussion will aim to explore how Ireland’s collective, social and personal memories shape our past, present and future. 

Ireland’s divided past is both physical and social. Over 100 years on, this event will ask how communities can work together to inherit a shared future.

Join chair for the evening Dr Paul Mullan, alongside speakers Dr Mary McAuliffe, Dr Jonathan Evershed, and Dr Maire Braniff as they explore topics such as; ways of remembering, how collective memory affects history and society, and the future of remembering in Ireland.

Dr Paul Mullan recently completed his PhD research on the role of heritage in a divided society. His particular interest is in the development of ethical approaches to contentious commemoration. He has published a chapter on this work in Heritage after Conflict, Crooke and Maguire, Routledge 2018. Dr Mullan also chairs the Decade of Centenaries Roundtable, which includes a number of organisations including universities, museums, various public bodies as well as community groups.

He is a member of the Irish Government’s Expert Advisory Committee on the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage and is on the board of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He has recently sat on Queen’s University of Belfast Vice-Chancellor’s Research Prize panel.

Dr Mary McAuliffe is a historian and Director of the Gender Studies Programme at UCD and holds a PhD from the School of History and Humanities, Trinity College Dublin. Her latest publications include as co-editor with Miriam Haughton and Emilie Pine,Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries; Commemoration, Gender, and the Postcolonial Carceral State(Manchester University Press, 2021) and as sole author,Margaret Skinnider; a biography (UCD Press, 2020). She was also co-editor ofSexual Politics in Modern Irelandand is writing onKilkenny and the Revolutionfor the Four Courts Press ‘The Irish Revolution, 1912–23’ County series. She is co-editor of Saothar; the Journal of the Irish Labour History Society. Currently, she is working on a major research project on gendered and sexual violence during the Irish revolutionary period, 1919-1923, to be published in 2023.

Dr Jonathan Evershed is currently the Newman Fellow in Constitutional Futures at the Institute for British-Irish Studies, University College Dublin. Formerly Postdoctoral Researcher on the EU-funded 'Ports, Past and Present' project at University College Cork and ESRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellow on the project, 'Between Two Unions: The Constitutional Future of the Islands after Brexit', also at University College Cork. His latest book, Ghosts of the Somme: Commemoration and Culture War in Northern Ireland (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018) examines Ulster Loyalist identity and the contested politics of commemoration in Northern Ireland during the Decade of Centenaries (2012-2022/23).

Dr Máire Braniff joined Ulster University in 2013 as a Lecturer in sociology and was Director of INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute) from 2016-2018 . Máire’s research expertise lies at the nexus of peace, justice and truth recovery. Her monograph was published by IB Tauris in 2011 “Integrating the Balkans: from Conflict to EU Expanision”, and she has co-authored several books including “Inside the Democratic Unionist party: from Protest to Power” (OUP) with Tonge et al and “Conflict as Commemoration” with McDowell (Palgrave). She is currently serving as a board member for the Community Relations Council.

Please register for this FREE online event below. Zoom links will be emailed to you prior to the event, spaces are guaranteed.