On as part of the British and Irish Trading Alliance’s programme on Education, Research, Innovation and Culture (E.R.I.C), Limerick Cultural and Academic Researcher, Dr. Mary Honan, will be given a civic reception recognising her ‘outstanding academic research on race & ethnic relations, peace & reconciliation.
Honour proposed by Prof. Dr. Michael Casey, Board Member of The British & Irish
Trading Alliance and Fellow of the Irish State. Honour bestowed upon her by Councillor Seán Lynch, Mayor of the Metropolitan District of Limerick.
Whilst her academic research was on the literary representation of WWII childhood, her work highlights the impact violence as well as racial and ethnic intolerance has on the youngest victims of conflict. Indeed, her work is a gentle reminder to the world today, as one is most certainly needed, about the continuing dangers of anti-Semitism and xenophobia as well as the insidious nature of scapegoating, bigotry towards all minority groups and the effects of such hate on the victims, the deportees, the injured, dying, dead, and those left to pick up the pieces.
More importantly her academic research stresses the fundamental importance of willing and respectful dialogical exchange, in the pursuit of peace, tolerance and reconciliation.
Dr. Honan says that, at the outside of her own research, she was ‘cognisant of the import role dialogue played in bringing about peace and understanding between Britain and the island of Ireland. This was evidenced through the Peace Process in the Northern part of the country and ultimately through the Good Friday Agreement, brought into effect on 2nd December 1999.
Peace and reconciliation could only have occurred through willing participants agreeing to sit down with one another in order to overcome centuries of sectarianism’. Nonetheless, Dr. Honan believes that, Brexit, and the debates surrounding “hard” or “soft borders” could throw all that hard work into disarray. It is for that reason alone that, in order to maintain peace between both countries, all respectful dialogical engagement should be maintained, and all views respected’.
Dr. Honan is an extraordinary humanitarian, and in the fullness of time her work will be seen as having made a ground-breaking contribution to the existing canon of research on deportation, racial hatred and human rights studies.
As a broadcaster on Limerick’s newest radio station, LiR International, coming soon to the airways, one of her shows, her national award winning radio show ‘Wild Geese’ will continue this discourse of race and ethnic relation, peace and reconciliation. Through in-depth interviews she will further interrogate the human effects of intolerance, racial hate and the generational effects of forced migration on those leaving the shores of Ireland and those for whom Ireland is a refuge.
Prof. Dr. Casey has expressed his pleasure at this award being conferred on Dr. Honan. It is his contention that it is an appropriate and Just tribute to this extraordinary woman, for whom the people of Limerick should be immensely proud.
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