Trinity Long Room Hub

Recorded November 26th, 2024. The Trinity Long Room Hub is delighted to welcome author and columnist Fintan O'Toole to present the 2024 Edmund Burke Lecture, 'Terror and Self-Pity: The Reactionary Sublime', which is supported by a generous endowment in honour of Padraic Fallon by his family. Fintan O'Toole is an author and columnist. His books include We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, he is a winner of the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize for political writing. He is also Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton University. About the Annual Edmund Burke Lectures Edmund Burke (1729-1797) graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1748. As a student he founded what would later become the College Historical Society, the oldest student society in the world. Burke entered Parliament in 1765 and quickly became a champion for political emancipation. After 1789, he directed his attention to the French Revolution and its immediate ramifications for political stability in England. To mark the university’s deep and lasting connection, and to express the inspiration his life and work as a public intellectual offer to us, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute has instituted a prestigious annual Edmund Burke lecture, delivered by a leading public intellectual of our time on a topic that engages with the challenges facing us today. One of Burke’s central and life-long concerns was what moral codes should underpin the social order, constrain the use of power and inform our behaviour as responsible citizens. This is as important today as it was in Burke’s time, and the Edmund Burke lectures will keep his manifold legacies alive by providing a prominent forum for contributing in his spirit to the wider discourse about what society we want to live in and what traditions, perspectives and values we need to draw on in the shaping of our future. Learn more at www/tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 19, 2024. A lecture by Francis Leneghan (University of Oxford) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. The rich corpus of Old English biblical prose remains a missing chapter in the history of the translation of the Bible. This paper will explore how, centuries before the Reformation, Old English prose authors sought to make the sacred words of the Bible available to a wide range of readers, lay and clerical. From the reign of King Alfred (871–99), a partial prose translation of the Psalms survives as well as a free rendering of sections of Exodus and the Acts of the Apostles. By the end of the tenth century, all four gospels and the first seven books of the Old Testament were available in English prose. This widening of access to the Bible was not without its problems; in the eyes of monks such as Ælfric of Eynsham, a little biblical learning on the part of the laity could be a very dangerous thing. English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series is a fortnightly meeting which has been integral to the School of English research community since the 1990s. The aim of the seminar series is to provide a relaxed and convivial atmosphere for staff and students to present their research to their peers. The series also welcomes distinguished guest lecturers from the academic community outside Trinity College to present on their work. It is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and engage with the diverse research taking place within the School.  Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Recorded November 7th, 2024. A hybrid seminar by Dr Brian Hurwitz (Emeritus Professor of Medicine and the Arts at the Centre for the Humanities and Health, King’s College London) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Abstract: Medicine is strewn with anecdotes, brief, pointed accounts of human episodes, drawn from scattered zones of healthcare experience. Traditionally viewed as a short form medical discourse which encompasses case reports, aphorisms, witticisms and hybridised versions of such texts and utterances, some are artfully fashioned micro-narratives, others ‘twitchily alive’ observations and dialogues. Frequently dismissed as epistemologically doubtful if not misleading frippery, he approaches anecdotes and the medically anecdotal as vernacular patient practices which support descriptive and moral insights into the sociality and power relations of medicine. An ‘unauthorised’, unregulated idiom, which does not seek to isolate events and experiences from subjective thoughts and feelings about them, anecdotes express a standpoint epistemology that articulates healthcare circumstances in new light. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded November 18, 2024. Trinity Long Room Hub Visiting Research Fellow Dr Shreya Atrey (Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford) in conversation with Prof Mark Bell (School of Law, TCD). Shreya Atrey is an Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and is based at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. She is an associate member of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, an Official Fellow and Racial Justice and Equality Fellow at Kellogg College, and a Senior Teaching Fellow at New College. Shreya is the Editor of the Human Rights Law Review (OUP). Previously, she was based at the University of Bristol Law School and has been a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and a Hauser Postdoctoral Global Fellow at the NYU School of Law, New York. She completed BCL with distinction and DPhil in Law on the Rhodes Scholarship from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Shreya works on equality and human rights issues in comparative and international law. Her first monograph, Intersectional Discrimination (OUP 2019) won the runner-up Peter Birks Book Prize in 2020. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded October 8th 2024. A lecture by Daria Moskvitina (Zaporizhzhia State Medical University) as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. For Ukraine, Shakespeare is an iconic figure, a symbol of European culture and European values. This talk will try to give a systematic understanding of how the Ukrainian reception of Shakespeare was formed, and explain its peculiarities at the present stage of development. English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series is a fortnightly meeting which has been integral to the School of English research community since the 1990s. The aim of the seminar series is to provide a relaxed and convivial atmosphere for staff and students to present their research to their peers. The series also welcomes distinguished guest lecturers from the academic community outside Trinity College to present on their work. It is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and engage with the diverse research taking place within the School.  Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded November 5th, 2024. A lecture by Ema Vyroubalová as part of the English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series. The paper discusses how productions of Shakespeare’s plays from East-Central Europe that transcend various geographical, national, and linguistic boundaries have influenced the theatrical-political discourse in this region from 1989 onwards. It focuses primarily on the work of four internationally-established directors: Andrei Şerban (Romania), Jan Klata (Poland),  David Jařab (Czech Republic),  and Matei Vișniec (Romania).  English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series is a fortnightly meeting which has been integral to the School of English research community since the 1990s. The aim of the seminar series is to provide a relaxed and convivial atmosphere for staff and students to present their research to their peers. The series also welcomes distinguished guest lecturers from the academic community outside Trinity College to present on their work. It is a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and engage with the diverse research taking place within the School.  Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded October 3rd, 2024. A hybrid seminar by Dr Ghaiath MA Hussein (Assistant Professor in Medical Ethics and Law, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. This presentation examines how armed conflict reshapes the concept of self, particularly in the Global South. Drawing from his experiences as a medical doctor and his bioethics background, Dr Hussein will discuss the challenges to informed consent and individual autonomy in war. His journey began at the University of Toronto, where he learned that respect for autonomy and informed consent are vital to ethical practice. These principles informed her advocacy for bioethics in oppressed regions like Sudan. However, his views changed when she returned to Sudan for research on health ethics in conflict zones. Engaging with those affected by the Darfur war revealed a collective ethos of trust and interdependence, showing that community well-being often outweighs individual autonomy in crises. In this talk, he will outline her thesis research questions and how his understanding of informed consent shifted from an individualistic model to a trust-based framework. This new paradigm prioritizes mutual support and communal resilience in ethical research practices during prolonged conflicts. He will conclude by advocating for a trust-based consent model that complements and sometimes replaces traditional informed consent. This approach addresses the unique challenges of armed conflict and empowers individuals through solidarity and collective action, encouraging a reevaluation of ethical engagement with crisis-affected communities to enhance their agency and dignity. Learn more at https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Closing panel on Heavy Metal, from thrash to doom and beyond, with Philip Coleman (English), Richard Duckworth (Music), Eimear Rouine (Transition to Trinity), ft. Ron Davies (UCD) & Elizabeth Boyle (NUI Maynooth). Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Darryl Jones (English) assesses the enduring relevance of The Beatles, and Jonathan Hodgers (Music) introduces his new book about Bob Dylan and film. In conversation with James Denis McGlynn (Film). Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Balazs Apor (Trinity Centre for Resistance Studies) on the legacies of underground music in late-socialism, and the role of non-conformist songs in expressing dissident (and dissonant) voices. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Eoin O’Dell (Law) examines the fundamentals of copyright law and AI through recent high-profile music cases, involving Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, Robin Thicke, Olivia Rodrigo, and more. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. A Long Table event with novelist and screenwriter Eoin McNamee (Director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre) who will tackle the big question alongside Nick Johnson (Creative Arts) with contributions from Trinity colleagues including Neville Cox (Law), Jane Ohlmeyer (History), Shane O'Meara (Neuroscience), Kata Szita (Human+ Fellow), Jennifer Edmond (Digital Humanities), Jake Erickson (Religion), Clodagh Brook (Italian) and others from Trinity’s interdisciplinary community. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Nicole Grimes (Music) explores expansive forms in women's compositions and considers the gaps in our knowledge of women in music from C19th to the present. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Trinity’s expert Assyriologist Martin Worthington (Near & Middle Eastern Studies) shows extracts from his new film about the recovery of lost languages and introduces student participants in the project. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Patrick Houlihan (History) discusses his new book on humanitarianism between the World Wars and considers humanitarian motivations in this era. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Brendan Browne (Religion) shows a new documentary on the threatened Bedouin communities of the West Bank and talks about his role as Executive Producer . Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Trinity's Environmental History Network. Katja Bruisch, Tim Stott, Diogo de Carvalho Cabral and Francis Ludlow delve into the history of wild and wonderfully bad ideas about climate and nature including wetland reclamation, geoengineering and Spaceship Earth. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Hub former artist-in-residence Mairead McClean presents her film, made as Decade of Centenaries partner with the Beyond 2020 Virtual Record Treasury project. Includes discussion with Jennifer O’Meara (Film). Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Mark Faulkner (English), Nicole Volmering (History), Anna Pitts (NLI) & Charlie Kerrigan (Classics), explore how writing has confronted city-dwellers throughout history, from graffiti in Pompeii to Gaelic script on street signs, and to slogans, stickers and QR codes on Dublin lampposts. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/

Recorded as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2024. Library staff go dewey-eyed at their favourites from Trinity’s collections featuring a C15th recipe against the plague, the secrets of Trinity’s banned books room, and other wonders. Learn more: www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/