The Twelfth Irish Australian Conference

The Twelfth Irish Australian Conference, ’From Youghal Harbour to Moreton Bay: Remembered Nations, Imagined Republics’, was hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies over four days in June 2002. With more than fifty papers presented and over 100 delegates in attendance, the Galway conference brought together many of the most eminent scholars in Irish Australian studies from Ireland, Australia, Britain, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand. Papers were presented on a broad range of issues including migration, ethnic identities, multiculturalism, health and gender, Irish-aboriginal relations, industrial relations, republicanism, language, literature and the efforts of Irish missionaries in Australia.

Keynote events included a provocative talk by Professor Germaine Greer of Warwick University entitled ’Ned Kelly and the Irish Inheritance’, a reading by John McGahern, Adjunct Professor of Irish Studies at NUI, Galway, from his acclaimed new novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, an exhibition of Australian Landscape Studies by Connemara artist, Mary Donnelly, and an evening of songs, poems, stories and ballads from Irish Australia with Seán Tyrell, Evelyn Conlon and Vincent Woods.

A full report on the conference proceedings by Val Noone was published in Táin No 20 August-September 2002 and is reproduced below by kind permission of The Australian Irish Network.

Report on Conference Proceedings  

Both reports are also available on An Táin website  http://www.tain.net.au/ 

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility