HI Research Projects 2021-26
CHCI Global Humanities Institute 2023
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation under the auspices of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, this investigates creative arts practices and local activism in the transition from mining to post-mining at sites in Ireland, Estonia, South Africa, Oceania and the United States. More >
Transnationalising the Humanities
We live in an entangled world in which the local, regional, national and global are interconnected through intricate networks and loops of exchange. The analysis of the multidirectional movement of people, languages, ideas, knowledge, and things requires innovative methodological perspectives that are capable of capturing all kinds of spatial and temporal practices. More >
Cultural Imaginaries of Just Transitions
This project puts the frameworks of 'just transitions'—that is, equitable energy and socio-economic transitions from fossil fuels to renewables—into dialogue with the critical and literary insights of humanities scholars. Through a series of workshops we will examine how cultural production mediates the desires and community formations generated by fossil fuel reliant societies, and how new representational forms can reframe how we imagine and participate in a world of climate emergency, with consequences for teaching and research at UCD. More >
Exploring Thresholds of Knowledge
This project sets out to interrogate questions of spatiality, textuality and the aesthetics of encounter. It comprises four distinct but interrelated approaches, led by teams of colleagues from across the College:1. Reading Spaces (led by Porscha Fermanis and Sarah Comyn), 2. Fictional Spaces (led by Katherine Fama and Emer O'Beirne), 3. Textual Spaces (led by Derval Conroy and Niamh Pattwell), and 4. Spaces of Encounter (led by Jeanne Riou and Michael Brophy). More >
Extractivist Landscapes: Humanities, Artistic and Activist Responses
This project aims to analyse the entangled relations between the extractivist processes of mining and how artists and activists work to reimagine the potential futures of post-excavated landscapes. Working across a range of geographic, temporal, and imaginary sites in literary, visual art, historical and cultural works, our project investigates the transhistorical and transregional legacies of mining in Europe and the UK with a specific focus on mines and the post-mining communities that have developed on the sites of defunct mines, as well as on the communities resisting the development of new mining sites, in Estonia (oil shale), Ireland (peat) and Northern Ireland (gold). More >
