I wrote my dissertation on sexual assault against women and teenage girls in twentieth-century Ireland. I’ve published an article on the crime that used to be known as “unlawful carnal knowledge of a teenage girl aged 15 to 17” that demonstrated that Irish law did not really care about this Read more…
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…