UCD College of Arts & Humanities enhanced its dedication to fostering creative talent and cultural enrichment with the opening of Trapdoor – a €2.5m state-of-the-art black box theatre and media lab, funded by UCD and the Creative Futures Academy, a HEA Human Capital Initiative. At the official opening, Frank McGuinness, Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing, declared Trapdoor “a new space to transform the arts in Ireland and continue what generations of artists from UCD have always done, leading the way for others to follow”. In partnership with Dublin International Film Festival, Dr Nic Pillai, School of English Drama & Film welcomed filmmaker Steve McQueen as the first official guest at Trapdoor for a Q&A event.
Academic ties between Ireland and Canada were strengthened with the launch of the Craig Dobbin Legacy Programme – a collaboration between the Ireland Canada University Foundation and the UCD Centre for Canadian Studies, headed by Dr Paul Halferty, UCD School of English, Drama & Film. The exchange scholarship programme will fund research projects for UCD scholars to go to Canada and Canadian scholars to come to UCD. Further developing our global engagement and impact, Portuguese became a dedicated subject in the School of Languages, Cultures & Linguistics in October 2023. The School also welcomed the Portugal Ambassador to Ireland, HE Bernardo de Lucena to UCD in April to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 1974 Carnation Revolution.
Dr Cathal Billings, School of Irish, Celtic Studies & Folklore spoke on RTÉ Radio 1 about UCD’s favourite words as gaeilge. These were the findings of an interactive project launched in the College where students, staff and faculty wrote their favourite Irish words and phrases on a life-sized white board, as part of UCD’s celebration of Seachtain na Gaeilge.
The School of Art History & Cultural Policy hosted the Annual College Lecture delivered by Professor Lynda Nead, Birkbeck University of London. ‘Women, Desire and the Image’, focused on 1960s pop artist Pauline Boty and the changing attitudes to sexuality and identity in post-war Britain. The School of Classics and the Classical Society hosted their inaugural lecture; ‘Parthians, Persians and Romans: Empires, War, Cold War and Co-Existence in the Ancient World’. The School of Music continued to entertain with a series of concerts and ensembles at UCD, the NCH and further afield. Meanwhile, the School of History celebrated 50 years of archival education at UCD, demonstrating the contribution and impact UCD archivists have made nationally and globally.
