Friday 16 June 2017

Historians in Residence – a new Dublin City project

Dublin City Council has put history and communities at the heart of an innovative new project which builds on last year’s commemoration of the 1916 Rising.

L-R: Back Row: Brian Hanley, Cormac Moore,
Donal Fallon; Front row: Maeve Casserly, 
Cathy Scuffil, Darragh Gannon (click to enlarge)
The centenary of the Rising saw unprecedented engagement with history in the city as hundreds of thousands of citizens, visitors and community groups remembered this pivotal moment in Ireland's history. Now Dublin City Council has recruited six Historians-in-Residence to build on this enormous public interest in history.

They are:
  • Darragh Gannon - Central Area
  • Donal Fallon - North West Area
  • Cormac Moore - North Central Area
  • Maeve Casserly - South East Area
  • Cathy Scuffil - South Central Area
  • Brian Hanley - Dublin City Library & Archive

They will give talks and tours, will lead walks and workshops, write blog posts and books and help communities to research their local area and showcase the findings. Decoding street names, photographing local monuments and memorials, meeting history groups, quizzes, debates and oral history projects are just some of the topics that have engaged them so far.

Getting the ball rolling, the historians are delivering a three-part lecture series on the Irish Revolution, 1917-1923 in 14 libraries across the city. (See yesterday's blogpost.)

The Historians-in-Residence project will be managed by Dublin City Public Libraries. Dublin City Librarian, Margaret Hayes said: “I am delighted to welcome these historians to Dublin City Council to continue the work under the Decade of Commemorations and to champion history in Dublin and its neighbourhoods where they will work with communities, schools and families on local history and stories. The City’s Library & Archives Service is custodian of amazing collections of documents, manuscripts and artefacts, all of which add to the memory of Dublin for its citizens, and the historians will be promoting these collections in the course of their work.”

One historian is based in each of the administrative areas of the city. Further details on the project and on the lecture series in June: http://www.dublincity.ie/decadeofcommemorations

Historians can be followed on Twitter @DubHistorians | #HistoriansinResidence.