Elizabeth Boyle

Thank you so much! 🙏🏻

Creative Medievalisms Now: Writing the Middle Ages Today and Tomorrow A two-day symposium on creative writing, the creative-critical seam, and the Middle Ages

I'm looking forward to speaking at this symposium at the University of Cambridge in January on creative writing and the Middle Ages. Booking is now open. #MedievalSky

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-m...

Ancient Egyptian pleasure boat found by archaeologists off Alexandria coast First-century luxury vessel matches description by the Greek historian Strabo, who visited city around 29-25BC

'Strabo had visited the Egyptian city ... & wrote ...: “These vessels are luxuriously fitted out & used by the royal court for excursions ...; for every day & every night is crowded with people on the boats who play the flute & dance without restraint & with extreme licentiousness.”'

A great crowd attending the Early Irish Research Seminar, 4 December 2025 © David Stifter.

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Research seminars and conferences

Dr Elizabeth Boyle established a series of three research seminars every semester in the Department of Early Irish as a forum for scholarly discourse and outreach in 2014. Since then, she and other colleagues have invited 66 scholars to speak in this series.
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Linguists start compiling first ever complete dictionary of ancient Celtic More than 1,000 words used as far back as 325BC to be collected for insight into past linguistic landscape

"These disparate sources have never before been brought together in a way that offers such an insight into the nature of Celtic languages spoken in these islands at the dawn of the historical period."

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

News and Updates | University College Cork Learn, Study and Research in UCC, Ireland's first 5 star university. Our tradition of independent thinking will prepare you for the world and the workplace in a vibrant, modern, green campus.

🚨Save the date!🚨A conference on Acallam na Senórach will be held on 21-22 August 2026, in University College Cork. Programme to follow. Further information will be available in due course at www.ucc.ie/en/disappear....

Frank Gehry, legendary Canadian-American architect, dies aged 96 The architect, whose work included the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, died after a brief illness

"Gehry, the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright, was one of the first to embrace the potential of computer design, and pioneered a distinctively exuberant style of bravura power, whimsical and arresting collisions of form."

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Yes, mainly in relation to computus, chronological calculation, astronomy & cosmology. Great work has been done on it by Immo Warntjes at TCD, & Christian Schweizer at Galway is doing really interesting work on Dicuil's scientific writings from the early ninth century.

Dr Sparky Booker of Trinity College Dublin giving her lecture on fifteenth-century petitions to the Irish parliament. Her PowerPoint slide visible on the screen to her right (left of photo) shows a map of Ireland and images pertaining to the Irish parliament in the later Middle Ages.

Last night in Maynooth, Dr Sparky Booker @tcddublin.bsky.social gave the 2025 Paul Walsh Memorial Lecture on "Law and Narrative in Fifteenth-Century Petitions to the Irish Parliament". An absolutely fascinating lecture, shedding light on late medieval Irish social history. @ceilteachomn.bsky.social

RTÉ to boycott Eurovision Song Contest over Israel Ireland will not participate in next year's Eurovision Song Contest, and it will not be broadcast by RTÉ, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed today that Israel will be allowed to take part...

Ireland will not participate in next year's Eurovision Song Contest, and it will not be broadcast by RTÉ, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed today that Israel will be allowed to take part

Books of the Year 2025: Part 2

See my "books of the year" selections for History Today - the modern development of the idea of "the Celts"; lives of Irish scientists @ria.ie; & the development of medieval towns. Some fantastic choices from other contributors too, now on my "to read" pile! 📚

www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist for Booker T & the MGs, dies aged 84 Prolific musician was known for work on songs like Green Onions and Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay

"Cropper played, and sometimes produced and engineered, on the MG tracks Soul-Limbo and Time is Tight, and such huge R&B hits as Redding’s (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay and Mr Pitiful; on Pickett’s In the Midnight Hour ..."

Day 4 of @davidstifter.bsky.social's Early Irish advent calendar focuses on some of my very wonderful PhD graduates. Very proud to have supervised these excellent scholars 👇🏻

Books of the Year 2025: Part 2

See my "books of the year" selections for History Today - the modern development of the idea of "the Celts"; lives of Irish scientists @ria.ie; & the development of medieval towns. Some fantastic choices from other contributors too, now on my "to read" pile! 📚

www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

Likewise!

Anisota's Annual Bluesky Harvest 2025 A recap of your year on Bluesky. Discover patterns, connections, and insights from your journey in the ATmosphere.

I used this one - just search for your username, no need to make an account: anisota.net/harvest

Seems pretty on brand for you!

This year I seem to have posted mostly about the things I care about!

I had a great "Making Space" session this evening, working in companionable silence with a community of cartoonists, fabric artists, printmakers, woodworkers, poets, novelists & nonfiction writers. In the midst of a busy week, towards the end of the semester, it felt great to reconnect with writing.

© Royal Irish Academy, Irish Script on Screen, RIA MS 23 N 10, p. 90, a Middle Irish poem on idolatry.

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Church history and Christian learning

In 2013, Dr Elizabeth Boyle joined the Department of Early Irish. One of her chief interests is the religious, cultural and literary history of early medieval Ireland (7ᵗʰ–12ᵗʰ centuries), that is the homilies, law, theological and philosophical texts,…
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Five of the best translated fiction of 2025 The return of Nobel laureate Han Kang; film-making under the Nazis; stuck in a time loop; Scandinavian thrills; and essential stories from postwar Iraq

The best book yet - maybe - from a Nobel laureate; a novel where PG Wodehouse makes a guest appearance; a book where Islamic State fighters are in need of Viagra; and two Scandinavian septologies, neither of which is by Jon Fosse.

Me on five of the best works of translated fiction this year:

Shells found in Spain could be among oldest known musical instruments Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher

They argue "that 12 large shell trumpets found in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia – and dated to between the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC – may have been used as long-distance communication devices and as rudimentary musical instruments."

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Day 2 of @davidstifter.bsky.social's advent calendar is ... me! 🧵👇🏻

Fresh from the printers:

David Stifter, "The Donaghmore Ogam Stone (I-KID-008)", Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society 25 (2024-5), 46-59.

Not sure that this actually appears in print, though...
If you want to read the pre-print: www.academia.edu/128037763/Do...

Fucking hell. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Can you have a community without craic? Scholars of Ireland’s pubs warn of declining numbers Two new books analyse what makes the ‘perfect pub’ and both come to a sobering conclusion: Irish pubs are in trouble

"Something doesn’t have to be the best to be important. It has to be part of its community. If you’ve had the worst day in your life the nearest pub is probably the best pub."

#Spéirghorm

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

I'm sorry not to be able to make it to the festivities in Galway this evening, but I want to wish a very happy 85th birthday to the wonderful supporter of Irish literature and arts that is @kennysbookshop.bsky.social - best wishes to all the Kenny family & the bookshop staff! 📚

Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror review – dark tales with a sting This collection of macabre stories set across England explores class, hierarchy and the enduring nature of inequality

"In folk horror the soil beneath our feet is seismically unstable. Our closest kin are unknowable and depraved, bound by unseen influences."

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Wildcat bones dating back over 5,500 years ago uncovered during dig in the Burren For the first time, archaeologists can say with certainty that European wildcats lived in prehistoric Ireland.

"The ancient DNA also showed that the Glencurran wildcat was a male and belonged to an ancient European lineage, closely related to wildcats from Italy and Spain, rather than the modern Scottish population."

#Spéirghorm

The brilliant Prof. Alex Woolf @standrewshist.bsky.social is back on the podcast to tell us what the Scandinavian diaspora got up to in the Middle Ages & why 'The Vikings' is a problematic concept. @maynoothuniversity.ie @researchireland.ie @tiagoovsilva.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/3ljZ...