Donnchadh Ó Corráin Memorial Lecture

24.06.2019

Donnchadh Ó Corráin Memorial Lecture
Irish Conference of Medievalists

University College Cork
27th June 2019

The Irish Conference of Medievalists takes place in University College Cork from 27 – 29 June 2019.

As part of this years’ conference, the inaugural Donnchadh Ó Corráin Memorial Lecture will take place at 4.45pm on Thursday 27.

Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History, University College Cork, was one of the founding members of the Irish Conference of Medievalists in 1986 and so it is particularly fitting that the inaugural lecture takes places in UCC.

Professor Ó Corráin was founder and director of the ArCH, CELT and Multi-Text Projects in UCC. He established, and until recently edited, Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland. His research interests included: the history and historiography of the early Middle Ages, Irish law, the Irish church, medieval Irish literature, genealogy, Irish manuscripts, viking studies, and computer applications in the humanities, especially the creation of corpora and the analysis of text. He published widely and often, from the seminal Ireland Before the Normans (Dublin, 1972) to The Irish Church, its Reform and the English Invasion (Dublin, 2017). He died on the 25th October 2017, a few months after the publication of his magnum opus Clavis Litterarum Hibernensium: Medieval Irish Books & Texts c. 400 – c. 1600 (Turnhout, 2017), a three-volume bibliography of Irish texts and manuscripts.

The lecture is supported by the National University of Ireland and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ireland and Her Excellency, Else Berit Eikeland, Norwegian Ambassador to Ireland will chair the lecture.

Jan Erik Rekdal, Professor of Irish at the Department of Linguistic and Nordic Studies, University of Oslo, was invited to deliver the inaugural paper and proposed to talk about: ‘Óláfr Sigtryggsson Kváran’s Triangle (Dublin, York and Iona): the Cultural Exchange along its Three Trajectories’. However, unfortunately due to ill health he is unable to travel.

Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards has very kindly agreed to give his plenary paper in place of Professor Rekdal. Not only is the theme of Professor Charles-Edwards’ paper — ‘Church and Laity in Irish Canon and Secular Law’ — a subject matter to which Prof. Ó Corráin himself contributed much, but Thomas and Donnchadh were also firm friends.

Thomas Charles-Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Celtic, Oxford University, is one of the foremost Celticists and medieval historians of his generation. Author of such seminal volumes as Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford, 1993), Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000) and Wales and the Britons 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), he has made a major contribution to our understanding of the legal systems and broader history of medieval Ireland and Britain.

The lecture is followed by a reception and a celebration of Irish Byzantine and Early Vocal Tradition. Both are open to the public.

Registration for the conference itself  is now closed, but details may be found at: http://www.irishmedievalists.com/

 

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