Conference Overview

On Thursday, June 28, 2007, Ireland elected its first black mayor, Rotimi Adebari, a Nigerian who arrived seven years ago as an asylum seeker. This event points to the rapid population change the country is experiencing. Ireland has undergone profound changes in the last decade, not simply by reversing a long history of emigration, but also by attracting hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, many of these from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. The arrival of over 207,000 Poles alone in the last decade is changing the face of the Irish nation and the Irish Catholic Church. The world accepted the Irish. Will the Irish accept the world? That is the question the Notre Dame Keough-Naughton Institute conference on “Race and Immigration in the New Ireland” (October 14-17) will address.

The conference will open with a keynote address on campus in Washington Hall Sunday evening, October 14th, by Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. President Robinson’s speech will also help the University of Notre Dame celebrate the 25th anniversary of its Center for Social Concerns.

The conference panels Monday through Wednesday will focus on “The Demographics of the New Ireland,” “Race,” “Legality and Rights,” “Work and Labor,” “The Experience of Women,” “Sport in the New Ireland,” “The Linguistic Challenge of Multi-Cultural Ireland,” “Social Integration,” on “What Ireland can learn from North-American and European Experience,” on relations “North and South,” and “Religion in the New Ireland.”

The conference on Race and Immigration in the New Ireland will close Wednesday October 17th with a keynote address at 11:15 A.M. in the McKenna Hall Center for Continuing Education by Notre Dame Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies, Luke Gibbons.

Among the distinguished participants, the conference speakers include John Haskins, the Senior Civil Servant responsible for Irish immigration policy; David Begg, the General Secretary of The Irish Congress of Trade Unions; Donncha O’ Connell, the Dean of National University at Galway Law School; Piaras Mac Éinrí, University College Cork; Salome Mbugua, the National Director of AkiDwA, the Irish African Women’s Association; Robbie McVeigh, Researcher and Human Rights Activist; Anna Lo, Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the first East Asian elected to a European parliament; Steve Garner of the University of Western England; Pat Hickey, President of the European Olympic Committee; Matthew Frye Jacobson of Yale University; Ali Selim, Secretary of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland; Isabela Grawbowski-Lusinski of the University of Warsaw; journalist Patsy McGarry; Anaele Diala Iroh; Philip Watt of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism; Ronit Lentin and Pádraig Ó Riagáin of Trinity College-Dublin; Mike Cronin of Boston College; Niamh Hourigan of University College Cork; Mary Corcoran of National University at Maynooth; Carmen Frese of University College, Dublin; Abel Ugba of the University of East London; and, along with Luke Gibbons, Jorge Bustamante and Tony Messina of Notre Dame. They will be joined by scholars, policy-makers and representatives from various groups making up what has come to be called the New Ireland.

The conference will also host a performance Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 8:00 P.M. in the DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts Decio Theater of the play, The Kings of The Kilburn High Road, by Arambe Productions, Ireland’s first African Theatre Company led by Nigerian Bisi Adigun. There will also be a pre-conference Saturday Scholar Lecture by Professor Luke Gibbons in the Snite Museum on Saturday, October 13th at noon, and a film, “In America,” to be shown Sunday afternoon, October 14th, at 4:00 P.M. in the Marie DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts.

Participants are welcome to register for the conference on line here

Conference Co-Sponsers

Major sponsors: Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Martyn & Nora Burke, Donald Keough, the Center for Social Concerns celebrating its 25th Anniversary, College of Arts & Letters, the Paul M. and Barbara Henkels Lecture Fund, R. C. Sweetman Family Fund, McCann-Erickson Fund, the McBride Fund, and the Government of Ireland and Consul General Sean Farrell.

Sponsors: The Notre Dame Graduate School, the Office of Research, the Office of International Studies, the Mendoza College of Business, the Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Notre Dame Law School, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Institute for Latino Studies, the Cushwa Center, the Department of Athletics, the Department of Irish Language and Literature, Gender Studies, the Higgins Labor Research Center, the Department of Economics and Policy Studies, the Department of English, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, the Department of Africana Studies, the Department of History, the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy, the Department of Political Science and the Department of East Asian Languages and Culture