Mary Immaculate College (MIC) opened its doors to host the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS), welcoming 350 delegates from Ireland and across the world.
The delegates participated in panels, book launches, a gala dinner, and a range of traditional cultural activities.
Patrick O’Donovan, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation, and Science, and an MIC graduate, said he was “delighted” to speak at the conference.
“Attracting such an important conference as this one to Mary Immaculate College is a statement of intent by the college and hopefully a sign of more to come,” he told the conference.
“I wish to thank the American Conference for Irish Studies for their work in promoting the multiple fields of study that are open to learners.”
Minister O’Donovan said it was “not lost on me that the USA is the single largest source of international students in the Irish higher education sector”.
He noted that the conference’s theme of ‘Embracing Change, Navigating Uncertainty’ was “a very thoughtful theme, as we live in a time of great change with many challenges, but also many great opportunities”.
On the wide roster of panel discussions across the conference were gothic literature, crime fiction, the millennial novel, Northern Ireland, podcasts, the 1798 Rising, AIDS, motherhood, the legacy of mother and baby homes, the Irish in Argentina, mixed marriages, settler colonialism, Irish-American propaganda, women’s prison poetry, Irish dance, murals, capitalism, Brexit, protest art, Irish radio, climate change, and the photography of the famine.
