AFIS Conference 2014 in Irish National Concert Hall

The 2014 annual conference for the Association of Franco-Irish Studies (AFIS) took place at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on the 23rd and 24th of May. Appropriately, given the venue, the conference theme was "France and Ireland: Celebrating Music, Words and Art".

The conference was opened by the new French Ambassador to Ireland, Mr Jean-Pierre Thébault. Speakers came from universities all over Europe and North America (including Ireland, France, Germany, Macedonia, UK, USA and Canada). Conference programme available here: http://arrow.dit.ie/afis/programme.pdf

Keynote speeches were delivered by the Irish Times Paris correspondent, Lara Marlowe and the Irish poet and author, Mary O'Donnell.

On Friday 23rd May, Lara Marlowe discussed France's place in the European Union from being firm advocates at the beginning of the project in the 1950s to the present state of the relationship. On Saturday 24th May, Mary O'Donnell was interviewed about her books of fiction and poetry by Sean Rocks of RTE's Arena arts programme. I had heard Mary O'Donnell on the radio before. She presented a really good programme on poetry in translation called Crossing the Lines. I'd advise you to listen to it if you have the time.

I delivered a paper on an aspect of my current research. In my paper, I looked at the way in which the French newspaper Libération used photographs to report on the Northern Irish 'Troubles' in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s.