Colonialism Conference returns to NUI Galway

Jun 22 2010 Posted: 00:00 IST
NUI Galway will host its sixth Conference on Colonialism entitled "Education and Empire" from 24-26 June 2010. The aim of this interdisciplinary event is to explore the role of education in shaping, promoting, and challenging imperial and colonial ideologies, institutions and processes throughout the modern world. The 2010 conference, organised in co-operation with TCD and the IRCHSS-sponsored inter-university research project, 'Ireland, Empire and Education', continues the prestigious tradition of a highly successful series of conferences, which has created an expanding network of international associations between Galway and institutions and individuals in continents across the world. The role of higher education in Ireland's colonial history and postcolonial present will be specifically addressed, as well as the relationship between these institutions and colonial power structures. Topics to be discussed at the conference range from missionary education to museums, from school stories to penal colonies, and from universities in the settler colonies to decolonization through education. Keynote speakers include; Professor John Coolahan, Emeritus, NUI Maynooth, Professor Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University, New York and Professor Sanjay Seth, Goldsmiths, University of London. The "Ireland, Empire and Education" research project was established to examine the complex relationships which developed between Irish universities and higher educational institutes and the British Empire, 1840-1940. This project draws on the existing interests of staff in the TCD School of Histories and Humanities as well as those of collaborators in NUI Galway and Queen's University Belfast. Dr Muireann O'Cinnéide, Director of the MA in Culture and Colonialism at NUI Galway, says: "It is particularly interesting to host this conference in NUI Galway as it allows us to consider the relationship between Ireland's rich educational tradition and its colonial history in the context of a wealth of different international perspectives and histories. The conference holds great relevance to academic programmes offered at NUI Galway and it promises to be a stimulating and challenging three days". Further information is available via www.conference.ie or from educationandempire@nuigalway.ie
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