‘Periodical research at UCD’

Symposium organised by the UCD School of English, Drama and Film

UCD Humanities Institute, 30 September 2019

Comments by FELIX M LARKIN introducing the panel that he chaired

Speakers on the panel:

Órna Roche (UCD Library), Margaret Kelleher (School EDF) & Lindsay Janssen (School EDF)

I would like to thank the UCD Humanities Institute and the UCD School of English, Drama and Film – and in particular, Lindsay Janssen – for inviting me to chair this panel this afternoon.

While I regard myself strictly as a historian, my BA here in UCD many years ago was in English and History. I had the privilege back then of studying under the great Denis Donoghue. In preparing these comments, it occurred to me that the School of English has been home to some of the finest and most charismatic scholars in UCD – not only Denis Donoghue, but Seamus Deane, Declan Kiberd, Gus Martin, Andrew Carpenter, Terry Dolan and, now, Margaret Kelleher (who is one of our speakers today). So I am proud of my former association with UCD School of English, and accordingly pleased to chair this panel of speakers today.

Another reason why I am pleased to chair this panel is because it is about newspapers and periodicals. For much too long, the press in Ireland – both newspapers and periodicals – has been a neglected field of study by historians and other scholars. Thankfully, this deficiency has been rectified in recent years – most especially, though not exclusively, through the efforts of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland, which Mark O’Brien of DCU and I co-founded in 2008. Our annual conferences since then, and the various publications which these conferences have generated, have advanced the cause of press history in Ireland. I welcome this symposium today as a further contribution towards advancing that cause.