The Republic of Ireland is finally going to hold a referendum on the right of members of the Irish diaspora to vote in presidential elections in Éire. Enda Kenny vetted the idea when he was still taoiseach, and it seems that the Oireachtas, now led by Leo Varadkar, is going Read more…
Bloomsday as you may or may not know is celebrated on June 16th, which was the day in 1904 in which Leopold Bloom took his (in)famous stroll around Dublin in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. If you haven’t read Ulysses, and most people haven’t but like to pretend that they have because it Read more…
On his personal blog, Gerry Adams has asserted that there should not be a border poll in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland until there is a cogent plan for what a united Ireland would actually mean in practice. In his view, we all learned a lesson from Brexit: Read more…
The school year is coming to an end, and as soon as I finish grading 26 papers on McCarthyism, I’ll no longer be a secondary-school teacher anymore. I’ve learned a lot from the four years I’ve spent teaching teenagers. Teenagers are energetic and funny and quite often frustrating. But, overall, Read more…
(Photo from the Irish Times) I am not a particular fan of boxing, but it’s still pretty cool that Ireland can boast being home to the undisputed lightweight champion of the world, Katie Taylor, from Bray. I know almost nothing about boxing, but I do know that a 10-round match that’s Read more…
In an apparent abdication of her connection with reason, Queen Elizabeth II invited Donald Trump for a state visit to the UK, which is supposed to happen starting Monday. Leave it to the Orange Sphincter (thanks, Bill Maher) to manage to arse this up just days before arriving, by calling Read more…
Sinn Féin has been pushing for an Irish language act in Northern Ireland, to give legal parity to the island’s native tongue. There is a small protest at Stormont this morning: But given SF’s recent losses, one might infer that the party’s intransigence in regards to restoring powersharing because of Read more…
In the recent elections for the European parliament (MEPs) and Irish local elections, Sinn Féin got trounced in the polls, winning only 81 seats across the country–about a 50% loss from 2014. The party’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, has been woefully unprepared to discuss the party’s losses and put forward Read more…
Many of my students and colleagues have been asking me some version of the question, “What the heck is going on in Northern Ireland?” As the only Ireland expert that anyone knows, I find myself giving a mini lecture on Irish history on a semi-regular basis since the murder of Read more…
When I lived in Belfast in the early 2000s, the city was beginning to recover from the thirty-year period of violence that the Irish somewhat euphemistically refer to as “The Troubles.” There was a shiny new shopping mall on Royal Avenue, tourists were trickling in and sipping pints at classic Read more…