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‘When the press is gagged, the reader has to read between the lines’… Piero...
In a time of political crisis, when real power eludes us or there is huge uncertainty about what we want or how to solve our problems, words may be the best weapon we have. It is journalism and...
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What’s the point of universities?
I know this blog has been very quiet for a while – unfortunately I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had much time for writing blog pieces in the last few weeks, although, annoyingly, I’ve had loads of...
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‘Sure they only work six hours a week’: Defending Irish academia
By Patrick Walsh Irish universities and the academic blogosphere are currently full of academics reflecting upon their position, as they attempt to generate responses to increasingly restrictive, and...
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‘Arts degrees. Please take one’… Is a humanities degree worth the paper it’s...
By Niamh Cullen I think most humanities students are asked at least once – and realistically, probably a lot more than that – why they chose to do an ‘arts’ degree. After all, what does history,...
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Escaping the ivory tower: academics and the city
By Niamh Cullen Last Wednesday I attended the inaugural event of a new group of Dublin based humanities scholars, Dublintellectual. The idea behind Dublintellectual – bringing the research of Irish...
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Political and Social Density in the age of Bubbles: Making Sense of the...
By Patrick Walsh There is an old Chinese curse that says ‘May you live in interesting times’. Few of us would dispute that we are living in ‘interesting times’ today. In Ireland, as elsewhere in the...
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The Politics of Art: Writing the Arab Spring
Ever since I read the excellent Pereira Maintains in January, I’ve been meaning to write about it properly, but never quite got around to it. A novel by Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi set in 1930s...
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One eye on posterity and one eye on the neighbours: watching oneself in the...
History tends to focus on important, pivotal moments; times of war, calamity, accelerated social change, revolution or unrest. But what happens when life gets back to ‘normal’ so to speak? When things...
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Striped shirts and hoodies: dressing for urban disorder
As the media discussion of the London riots unfolded last week – with its talk of hoodies, ‘cardigans’ and the art of looting the right trainers – I was reading about Italian protest movements in the...
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Through the Fanlight Glass: Space and the Dublin Townhouse
Recently I have begun to think anew about space. No not what lies above in the starry heavens, but instead the spaces we inhabit and how we use them. Some of these spatial thoughts have been influenced...
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