RadioMoLI
Museum of Literature Ireland
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Broadcasting from the Museum of Literature Ireland, RadioMoLI is a digital radio station of Irish literature.
Available episodes
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20 Jul 2023
Writer Presents #4: Sally Hayden
RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the fourth episode of Writer Presents, writer, journalist and photographer Sally Hayden speaks to Gulwali Passarlay, Suad Aldarra, Helon Habila, Jane Grogan and Seán Columb about the role of storytelling in shaping our understanding of migration.
Sally Hayden is an award-winning journalist and photographer currently focused on migration, conflict and humanitarian crises. She has worked with VICE, CNN International, the Financial Times Magazine, TIME, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, BBC, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, among many others. Sally has reported from many countries across the globe, including Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan, DR Congo, Panama, Cambodia, Liberia, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Niger and Sierra Leone. Her writing has been translated into nine languages and she has appeared as a TV and radio guest. Sally has a law degree from University College Dublin and an MSc in International Politics from Trinity College, Dublin, where her thesis was on post-conflict societies and theories of civil war resolution. Her first book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned was published in 2022.Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Researched and presented by Sally Hayden
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Edited and Mixed by Ian Dunphy
Music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Nathan Sherman
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20 Jul 2023
Writer Presents #3: Sarah Maria Griffin
RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the third episode of Writer Presents, writer and zine creator Sarah Maria Griffin looks at the importance of zines to her throughout her life and guides the listener through creating a zine of their own.
Sarah Maria Griffin is from Dublin. She is the author of the novels Spare and Found Parts, and Other Words For Smoke. She also makes zines.
Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Researched and presented by Sarah Maria Griffin
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Edited and Mixed by Ian Dunphy
Music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Nathan Sherman
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5 Apr 2023
St Bridget’s Day Traditions on Inis Meáin
The Folklore Society of Ireland Annual Lecture 2023
This bi-lingual lecture, co-hosted by MoLI and An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann / The Folklore of Ireland Society, focused on St Brigid’s Day Traditions on Inis Meáin. The lecture was given by journalist and broadcaster Aedín Ní Thiarnaigh who has carried out extensive fieldwork and research on Inis Meáin on the celebration of St Brigid’s Day. Ní Thiarnaigh explored Inis Meáin’s unique landscape and its effect on the people and culture, as well as looking as traditions such as the Brídeog and rare variations on the St. Bridget’s Cross.
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18 Jan 2023
A George Moore Kaleidoscope
To celebrate the unveiling of a George Moore bust at the museum, we were joined for an afternoon of panel discussions and presentations exploring the varied and multicoloured life of this most singular Irish writer through music, architecture, visual art and conversation. Guest speakers included Katherine McSharry (Acting Director, National Library of Ireland), Robert O’Byrne (writer and historian), Maeve Casserly (historian), Prof. Adrian Frazier (NUI Galway), Dr Mary Pierse, Prof. Harry White (UCD) and Kayla Kennedy (violinist)
Recorded in MoLI’s Old Physics Theatre, 25 November 2022.
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24 Dec 2022
The Christmas Ghost Story: Hertford O'Donnell's Warning
MoLI presents the third annual MoLI Christmas Ghost Story: ‘Hertford O’Donnell’s Warning’ (1867) by Charlotte Riddell, performed by Kathy Rose O’Brien, in an edited and abridged form.
Surgeon Hertford O’Donnell is a rising star at Guy’s Hospital, London, known for his steady hand and unshakeable bravery. In his personal life, however, the eccentric and lonely Irishman has a less than sterling reputation.
All alone on Christmas Eve, he receives an unexpected visit from Ireland. Estranged from his family for over twelve years, the O’Donnell banshee visits him in his Soho townhouse, bringing tidings of death and retribution for the past.
Will Hertford O’Donnell survive the night, or does the banshee cry for him?
Producers Dr Katie Mishler, Ian Dunphy, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Sound Ian Dunphy
Script Dr Katie Mishler
Sound Design Ian Dunphy & Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Music Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
This recording has been kindly supported by the European Research Council Victeur project, with thanks to Professor Gerardine Meaney, UCD School of English, Drama and Film and the INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics. Research for this recording is provided by Dr Katie Mishler, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame and Dr Maria Mulvaney, Lecturer, UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics. Visit ghostlyirishfictions.com for more about Dr Maria Mulvaney’s work on the Irish ghost story.
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14 Jul 2022
Past/Present/Pride #5: Sean Hewitt
In the fifth episode of Past/Present/Pride, Dr Paul D’Alton speaks to writer and poet Seán Hewitt, on the eve of the publication of his new memoir, All Down Darkness Wide. Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire, is published by Jonathan Cape. He is a book critic for The Irish Times and teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire, won The Laurel Prize, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award.
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5 Apr 2022
Every Life is Many Days: Nuala O’Connor’s Nora
Every Life is Many Days is a podcast about James Joyce and his family in the contemporary novel. Presented by Professor Anne Fogarty of the School of English, Drama and Film at UCD and Director of the UCD James Joyce Research Centre, the podcast looks at how the many gaps between Joyce the man and Joyce the writer have in recent years been movingly explored in a number of novels that think about his life in very different ways.
In this episode, writer Nuala O’Connor discusses her novel Nora, the challenges of writing a historical figure as a fictional character, and much more.
Nuala O’Connor was born in Dublin in 1970 and lives in County Galway. Her fifth novel NORA (Harper Perennial/New Island, 2021), about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce, was named as a Top Ten historical novel by the New York Times in 2021. Nuala is editor at flash fiction e-journal Splonk. nualaoconnor.com
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16 Feb 2022
Every Life is Many Days: Anna Vaught's Saving Lucia
Every Life is Many Days is a podcast about James Joyce and his family in the contemporary novel. Presented by Professor Anne Fogarty of the School of English, Drama and Film at UCD and Director of the UCD James Joyce Research Centre, the podcast looks at how the many gaps between Joyce the man and Joyce the writer have in recent years been movingly explored in a number of novels that think about his life in very different ways.
2022 marks the centenary of the publication of Ulysses on the 2 February 1922 by Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Inevitably, much attention will centre on Ulyssesthis year, but the centenary also provides an opportunity to reconsider James Joyce’s legacy and to think about how we view him both as a person and as a literary icon.
The series features the work of five authors who have woven Joyce and his family into their novels: Anna Vaught, Nuala O’Connor, Frank McGuinness, Mary Costello, and Mary Morrissey. In conversation with them, we will discuss many aspects of Joyce’s influence on the modern novel. We’ll examine the much mythologised, but often unremembered, aspects of the lives of his partner, Nora Barnacle, and Lucia Joyce and Georgio Joyce, Joyce’s son and daughter. This podcast explores why Joyce continues to act as such a lively source of inspiration for contemporary fiction writers.
Anna Vaught is a novelist, poet, essayist, short fiction writer, editor, proof-reader, copywriter and also a secondary English teacher, tutor, mentor to young people, mental health advocate, campaigner and mother of three. Her Saving Lucia (Bluemoose, 2020) intertwines the stories of Violet Gibson, the Irish aristocrat who shot Mussolini, Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce, Blanche, a patient of Charcot at the Salpetrière clinic in Paris, and Anna O, analysed and written about by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. Anna’s reviews, features, short stories, creative nonfiction, poems and memoir pieces are widely published in journals, anthologies, and the press; she is also a monthly columnist for The Bookseller. She has written a new novel, The Zebra and Lord Jones, and a non-fiction book on gentle productivity in writing, The Alchemy. annavaughtwrites.com
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23 Dec 2021
The Christmas Ghost Story: The Demon Lover
MoLI continues its annual Christmas Ghost Story tradition with Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Demon Lover’ (1945), performed in its entirety by Derbhle Crotty.
Mrs Kathleen Drover returns to her dusty, abandoned Kensington home to gather some of her family’s forgotten belongings. Set in London during World War II, the city is eerily vacant, as families like her own have been evacuated to the countryside to escape the bombings of the Blitz. Nevertheless, Kathleen experiences the distinct and unsettling feeling of being watched. When she discovers a mysterious letter from her former lover, a soldier killed in World War I, memories of their brief courtship and his cold, controlling manner overwhelm her.
Is the letter a cruel joke? Could it be a fabrication of Kathleen’s imagination? Or more frighteningly, are the ghosts of her past reckoning upon the present? In this chilling and uncanny tale, Bowen demonstrates her mastery of the ghost story form.
Funding for this recording is supported by Professor Gerardine Meaney and the European Research Council advanced grant, VICTEUR: European Migrants in the British Imagination: Victorian and Neo-Victorian Culture. Research is supported by Dr Katie Mishler and the Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Enterprise Partnership Fellowship grant Mapping Gothic Dublin, in association with MoLI and the UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics.
Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London, on behalf of the Literary Executors of the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen. Copyright © Elizabeth Bowen.
Producers Dr Katie Mishler, Ian Dunphy, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Sound Ian Dunphy
Music Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
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18 Nov 2021
Launch of All Strangers Here
A new anthology from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Arlen House, All Strangers Here explores the interrelationships between diplomacy, creativity, and language across poetry and prose published by Irish diplomats and their families over the past century.
Part of a wider programme marking the centenary of the Irish Foreign Service, it features many remarkable writers, amongst them: Eavan Boland and Maeve Brennan, both daughters of Ambassadors; poets Valentin Iremonger and Denis Devlin; and Conor Cruise O’Brien and Máire Mhac an tSaoí, one of the State’s first female diplomats.
For this launch event on 18 November 2021, Rick O’Shea was joined by co-editor Angela Byrne, contributors Richard Ryan and Siobhán Campbell, and the Department’s former Secretary General, Niall Burgess, who initiated the project, to celebrate the volume’s launch and discuss the arts of diplomacy and writing.
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs.
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10 Nov 2021
Writer Presents #2: Dermot Bolger
RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the second episode of Writer Presents, the poet, playwright and novelist Dermot Bolger looks at the life and enduring legacy of Herbert Simms (1898-1948) – the architect responsible for much of Dublin’s early twentieth-century social housing, whose home on St. Mobhi Road Bolger would pass on his pandemic lockdown walks.
“I found it fascinating to imagine his life – he was a man who suffered greatly from the strain of his work,” says Bolger. Through conversation with with three geographers – Dr Ruth McManus, Dr Joe Brady and Mary Broe, the writer pieces together the remarkable and tragic story of Simms’ efforts to improve the lives of many Dubliners. Broe, having grown up in Pearse House also sheds a poignant light on the lived experience of Simms’ designs. The programme ends with a powerful reading of Bolgers’…
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10 Nov 2021
Dublin Gothic #3: Daughters of Dracula
Do you enjoy reading ghost stories alone at night? Have you ever binged an entire true crime series? Or do you unwind watching horror films like The Exorcist, or reading the supernatural novels of Stephen King? The Dublin Gothic Podcast is a series looking at the intersection between art, psychology, folklore, architecture, natural history and Ireland’s urban gothic writing.
Vampires, ghosts, and the undead have an enduring cultural legacy. These uncanny figures inform, or perhaps infect, depictions of the body, maternity, and sexuality in contemporary Irish women’s writing. This panel discussion, recorded live in MoLI’s Old Physics Theatre, led by Dr Katie Mishler and featuring Sarah Davis-Goff, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, and Sophie White, uncovers how the gothic monstrosities of Bram Stoker and others continue to be a powerful metaphor for social anxieties, marginalisation, and historical erasure.
Sarah Davis-Goff is co-founder of Tramp Press, which publishes the Recovered Voices…
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10 Nov 2021
Dublin Gothic #2: Charles Maturin in Marsh's Library
What do dancing curates, and headless mummies, and dog-eared sixteenth-century manuscripts about sexual deviancy have in common? In this episode, Dr Katie Mishler speaks with Dr Tina Morin, senior lecturer in English at University of Limerick, and Dr Jason McElligott, Director of Marsh’s Library in Dublin, about Charles Maturin’s gothic masterpiece Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) and Marsh's Library's new exhibition, Ragged, livid & on fire: The Wanderings of Melmoth at 200. The panel discuss Maturin's visits to Marsh's Library, imagine what he may have read there and shed light on some bizarre finds within the walls of the library.
Dr Katie Mishler is an Irish Research Council Enterprise Partnership Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022) in collaboration with the UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics and Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). Her current project, Mapping Gothic Dublin: 1820-1900, researches the relationship between Dublin’s urban history and the development of Ireland’s liter…
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10 Nov 2021
Chris Haughton in conversation
Chris Haughton, whose work is the subject of our temporary exhibition, Purple Squirrel, is a picturebook writer and illustrator. Haughton, who often among the very first Irish writers encountered by young children, has written and illustrated six books: A Bit Lost, Oh No, George!, Shh! We Have a Plan, Goodnight Everyone, Don’t Worry, Little Crab and Maybe. For this conversation, recorded in MoLI’s colourful Learning Room in July 2021, Haughton is joined by MoLI’s Director – Simon O’Connor – as well as Zoe Brady, who is part of our team here at MoLI. Zoe holds a MPhil in Children’s Literature and was involved in the research process behind the exhibition.
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10 Nov 2021
Launch of A History of Irish Women's Poetry
Join MoLI, in partnership with the Embassy and Consulates General of Ireland in the UK, for the online launch of A History of Irish Women's Poetry, a ground-breaking and comprehensive account of Irish women's poetry from earliest times to the present day, in both English and Irish. The book reads Irish women's poetry through many prisms – mythology, gender, history, the nation – and most importantly through close readings of the poetry itself.
The event features the book's editors, Ailbhe Darcy and David Wheatley, in conversation with Professor Sarah Prescott, as well as readings from poets Ciara Ní É and Rachael Hegarty.
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10 Nov 2021
Writer Presents #1: Claire-Louise Bennett
"Get on with what? Get on with getting a job and a house and a husband and all the rest of it and I just didn't want to. I wasn't interested – or able for any of that at all.... But I couldn't see any alternatives, I just couldn’t see any way around it, so I thought I’ve got to get out of here, and so I came to Ireland. So many Irish people have gone to England to get work and I came to Ireland to get away from it." – Claire-Louise Bennett
RadioMoLI's Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the first episode of Writer Presents, Claire-Louise Bennett looks at three writers that have inspired her own work: Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, English writer Ann Quin, and French writer Annie Ernaux.
Through interviews with novelist Dorthe Nors, writer and critic Jennifer Hodgson, literary agent Laurence Laluyaux and novelist Deborah Levy, Bennett teases out some of the challenges fa…
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10 Nov 2021
Dublin Gothic #1: The Psychology of Horror
Do you enjoy reading ghost stories alone at night? Have you ever binged an entire true crime series? Or do you unwind watching horror films like The Exorcist, or reading the supernatural novels of Stephen King? The Dublin Gothic Podcast is a series looking at the intersection between art, psychology, folklore, architecture, natural history and Ireland’s urban gothic writing.
In this episode, Dr Katie Mishler interviews horror aficionados and experts Dr Noreen Giffney and Brian J. Showers about the psychology of horror, the lasting impact of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ghostly terrors, and why we find comfort in experiencing fear.
Listen to Sheridan Le Fanu’s The Familiar here.
Dr Katie Mishler is an Irish Research Council Enterprise Partnership Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022) in collaboration with the UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics and Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). Her current project, Mapping Gothic Dublin: 1820-1900, researches the relationship between Dublin’s urb…
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10 Nov 2021
Past/Present/Pride #4: Adiba Jaigirdar
In the fourth episode of Past/Present/Pride – a series of conversations that celebrates LGBTQ+ writers – psychologist Dr Paul D'Alton speaks to writer Adiba Jaigirdar. Adiba Jaigirdar was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and has been living in Dublin from the age of ten. She has a BA in English and History from University College Dublin, and an MA in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Kent. She is the author of The Henna Wars, which was named a best book of the year by Kirkus, and was a semi-finalist for Best Young Adult Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Her sophomore novel, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating was released earlier this year.
Past/Present/Pride is a collaboration between MoLI and UCD’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion programme. Over the last number of years UCD has made an explicit commitment to promoting an inclusive community where people identifying as LGBTQ+ feel safe, valued and provided equal opportunity.
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10 Nov 2021
Past/Present/Pride #3: Mary Dorcey
In the third episode of Past/Present/Pride, Dr Paul D’Alton hears from Mary Dorcey, poet and fiction writer, about learning to read, coming out, her relationship with her mother, and her experience of an oppressive 1970s Ireland. Mary Dorcey has been publishing poetry since her first collection Kindling in 1982. Her poetry has appeared on the Junior Certificate curriculum in Ireland, the O Level curriculum in the UK, and in the BBC anthology A Hundred Favourite Poems of Childhood, and in 1990 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature. Dorcey’s work explores the deep complications and joys of love and relationships. Her poems have been recognised for their touching descriptions of homosexual love and her frank and honest exploration of the relationship between mother and daughter. She is a member of Aosdána and now lives in Wicklow.
Past/Present/Pride is a series of conversations that celebrates LGBTI+ writers. Hosted by psychologist Dr Paul D’Alton, Past/Present/Pride ref…
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10 Nov 2021
Past/Present/Pride #2: Colm Tóibín
In the second episode of Past/Present/Pride, Dr Paul D’Alton talks to Colm Tóibín, celebrated Irish writer and three-time Booker Prize nominee. Tóibín’s work across journalism, non-fiction, short story, drama, and novel is known for its exploration of the inner world of fully realised characters, their flawed inter-relations with those around them, and their struggle to find identity torn between divided worlds. In this hour of conversation, Tóibín discusses topics ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, his experience with cancer, the role of the novelist in today’s world, and recent forays into the world of poetry.
Past/Present/Pride is a series of conversations that celebrates LGBTI+ writers. Hosted by psychologist Dr Paul D’Alton, Past/Present/Pride reflects on the work of writers that have witnessed significant social change for members of the LGBTI+ communities in Ireland & beyond. Past/Present/Pride is a collaboration between MoLI and UCD’s Equality, Diversity and I…
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10 Nov 2021
Past/Present/Pride #1: Emma Donaghue
In the first episode of Past/Present/Pride, Dr Paul D’Alton speaks with Emma Donoghue, author of over twelve novels, including Room, Akin, and Stir Fry. Across a rich hour of conversation, Donoghue, born in Dublin in 1969, touches on subjects as diverse as same-sex parenting, the tension between safety and freedom, coming out to her mother, and the power of fiction. Donoghue’s new novel, The Pull of the Stars (Pan Macmillan) is set in a Dublin hospital in 1918 during the height of the Spanish flu pandemic.
Past/Present/Pride is a series of conversations that celebrates LGBTI+ writers. Hosted by psychologist Dr Paul D’Alton, Past/Present/Pride reflects on the work of writers that have witnessed significant social change for members of the LGBTI+ communities in Ireland & beyond. Past/Present/Pride is a collaboration between MoLI and UCD’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion programme.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Claire Kilroy
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Mark O'Halloran
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Caitriona Lally
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Nick Laird
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Paul Murray
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Ian Lynch (Lankum)
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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10 Nov 2021
Ireland's Generation X? / Belinda McKeon
Presented by MoLI in partnership with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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