UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Monday, 25 April 2016 at 11.30 am
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR DIARMAID FERRITER, School of History on 25 April 2016, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on CATRIONA CROWE
President, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
The recent commemorations to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising witnessed an exceptional engagement with primary source material relating to this seminal historic event. Such has been the scale of the archival material released in recent years that it has transformed our understanding of Ireland 100 years ago. Much of the material has been digitised and includes powerful personal testimony, shedding light on social and economic history as well as political and military history. What it has amounted to is an invitation to complicate the narrative of modern Irish history.
That phrase- “complicate the narrative”- is one that is really owned by Catríona Crowe; that we can and must complicate the narrative is due in no small measure to her efforts to champion the release of archival material, to do the work to make the releases possible and to powerfully communicate the content of such material and interpret it in a lively, scholarly and provocative way.
Catríona graduated in history and English from UCD in 1973. As a public servant for over 40 years, working in the Public Record Office, now the National Archives, since 1974, her contribution to the accessibility of sources has been unparalleled; first with responsibility for the State Paper Office in Dublin Castle for several years in the 1970s and 1980s, then with responsibility for many departmental records and education services after the National Archives Act of 1986. Crucially, in the last 15 years, as head of Special Projects in the National Archives, she managed the Irish census online project that culminated in 2007 with the release of the 1901 and 1911 census returns on line, free of charge, to be accessed from all corners of the globe. The census project is widely recognised as the single most-successful online educational project ever undertaken in Ireland and passed the billion-hit mark in November 2014. It has provided the demographic basis for study of the decade of revolution, has been a great stimulus to “roots tourism” and will be one of the most enduring legacies of the era of commemorations.
Much of the effort underpinning a project like this is behind the scenes; figuring out the practical and technological logistics, battling with government departments for funding and bringing partners on board across the public sector. As Catríona has observed recently “Ireland has a depressing record of archival self-destruction”, most notably the destruction of the State Paper Office in the Four Courts at the outset of the civil war, as combatants brought about the virtual annihilation of the largest body of material on the history of this island ever gathered together. But we are in a much better place today, and Catríona has been instrumental in ensuring that we now have, in her words, “a plethora of relevant high quality sources”, including the Bureau of Military History and the Military Service Pensions Files generated by the revolutionary generation and their governors from the 1920s onwards.
Catriona has excelled in working with and leading others on all these projects. She edited the book Dublin 1911 in 2011, published by the Royal Irish Academy and regarded as a triumph of book production. She is also an editor of the acclaimed Documents on Irish Foreign Policy series, published since 1997 and a project of the Royal Irish Academy, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the National Archives. Scrupulously edited, with clear, concise introductory essays, the series is an exemplary collaborative project and represents a major Irish intellectual landmark.
As well as serving as President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland from 2003-9 and Vice President of the Irish Labour History Society from 2009-12 before becoming its honorary president, Catríona was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2011. More recently, she shone as a television presenter in RTE’s Before the Rising programme, by humanising our history with humour, candour, insight and hard information gleaned from the archives.
Her contributions have in no way been confined to the protection and promotion of our national heritage. She joined the board of the SAOL project in 1998 and became its chairperson in 2002; this is a community project aiming to transform the lives of women affected by addiction and poverty, operating on the basis of social justice, adult education and community development principles. She was also co-founder of the Inner City Renewal group, dedicated to the renewal of inner city Dublin and the provision of welfare advice. She has also served as Chairperson of the Irish Theatre Institute, which promotes and supports Irish theatre, and has worked closely with ANU Theatre Company on its historical productions and contributed to the unique sense of engagement its shows elicit from the audience. She contributes regularly to the broadcast and print media on cultural and historical matters; she delivers public lectures throughout the country to many different communities and is an accomplished writer, reviewer, critic and commentator.
Catríona is thus a champion of public history in all its manifold forms; public history for her is about “engaging people of all ages and classes to reflect upon the past, to think about consequences for the present and, in some cases, to change public policy.” She is also conscious of the ethical aspects of making records available to people and the extent to which the ethical dimension goes to the heart of public history; insisting that there are standards that have to set and maintained for managing and preserving public records and documents.
I first met Catríona 20 years ago this year and it is a friendship I treasure. She traverses many worlds and is a true bohemian and an inspiring force of nature. She has extraordinary energy, laced with irreverence, fun and mischief. She is kind, loyal and humane, passionate about social change, a strong advocate of basic human rights and holds a lifelong belief in fairness and respect. An intellectual powerhouse and a committed feminist, she is exceptionally generous with her gifts and has used her talent, hard work, imagination, persistence and patriotism to tremendous effect and in doing so, has become a public servant of great stature.
_____________________________________________________________________
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hanc meam filiam, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.