Marc Scully

The front and back cover of a book: 'The Drift of Memory' by Dermot Murphy. The front cover is a painting of a young woman looking out over the railing of a ferry at sea.

I was glad to receive a copy of Dermot Murphy's new poetry collection "The Drift of Memory" today. It was inspired by the experience of his mother's generation: women who moved from Ireland to Britain in the mid-20th Century.

A fully funded European PhD training programme (2026–2029) MITIME is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network focusing on how time shapes migration, inequality, and urban life in post-industrial Europe. We train early-stage researchers in cutting-edge theory...

Really interesting looking European Doctoral Network on Migration & Time, with 15 funded PhD positions, two in @ucc.ie : www.migrationtime.eu

Cailín as an tSeanchoill sa chraobh, freisin.

www.echolive.ie/corknews/ari...

Ah! My sister plays keyboards for Cork’s premier 80s & 90s power ballad supergroup, so I’ve heard the piano intro and first lines of that particular song quite a lot over the years!

www.instagram.com/fope_band?ig...

All Coming Back to Me Now by Céline Dion?

(I’ll be very impressed if I’m right).

Netflix limited series about the tortured genius artist who created old VHS covers

I now want a deep dive from an art historian on the shift from the ‘late 80s/early 90s VHS tape design aesthetic’ to the ‘mid-to-late 90s VHS tape design aesthetic’, and to what extent that mirrored trends in cassette tape design.

Please fill this in Irish parents!

For reference, the two schools closest to us are single-sex and Catholic ethos. If you prefer co-ed, or are at all unexcited about the prospect of separating a load of 4- and 5-year-olds from half their peers, do say so...

Closing next Tuesday! Again, if you have primary school aged children or younger and you haven’t filled this in yet, it only takes 3 minutes.

(Beyond the initial news reports on the day the survey was launched, I haven’t exactly seen a publicity push around this…)

Why not just turn this tendency up to 11 and publish articles saying “I asked chatGPT if my hypothesis is correct and it said yes so we conclude it is”

I am not anti LLM across the board. But if your use case starts with the necessary assumption that the model is a vessel of all human knowledge, then you are consulting an oracle not doing scientific research.

In our new @gpir-sage.bsky.social paper w/ @storunczykruiz.bsky.social & @anetapiekut.bsky.social, we examine national & local identification, as well as their interplay, as determinants of attitudes to international & internal migration. We found that … 1/ doi.org/10.1177/13684302251391155

A new publication from esteemed departmental colleagues Chloé & Suzanne on the effects of different forms of screen-time in early childhood using data from the Growing Up in Ireland study : journals.sagepub.com/doi/reader/1...

Great to have this concrete example from Dave for the next time we have to give a "you never know where your Psychology degree @micireland.bsky.social is going to take you" talk!

kermit the frog is wearing a suit and tie and holding a glass of wine and saying `` hmm . cheers . '' Alt: kermit the frog is wearing a suit and tie and holding a glass of wine and saying `` hmm . cheers . ''

Of course, different circumstances would mean a very different version of the movie. There’s a mournful core to the Muppets Christmas Carol that is about grief and moving on with grief. I think that’s why it resonates so much in adulthood. But regardless!

So here’s a challenge: cast Rowlf in a version of the Muppets Christmas Carol that was made under different circumstances (i.e. not immediately following the death of Jim Henson).

I think he’d have made a good Dickens: but it’d have been a very different Dickens to the Gonzo/Rizzo double act.

If, for instance, one of your parents were born on the island of Ireland before 2005, you’re automatically considered an Irish citizen without the need to apply for same: www.ireland.ie/en/dfa/citiz...

YouTube video by dorcm1973 The Muppet Show: Rowlf - "You and I and George"

The early seasons of the Muppet Show coming out on DVD were a revelation if only for the realisation that "Hang on. Rowlf's the star!"

"You and I and George" is a masterpiece of laconic comic delivery: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ7n...

Ah, I can't take the credit - it's not my CFP!

Magnificent pun in the title, also.

Call for Papers: ‘Irish Blood, English Hearth: creativity, identity and the migrant Irish home' - Museum of the Home Call for papers for ‘Irish Blood, English Hearth: creativity, identity and the migrant Irish home’, a one-day symposium inspired by the Irish room that was launched at the Museum of the Home in 2024.

Really interesting CFP for #IrishinBritain scholars here from @museumofthehome.bsky.social .

museumofthehome.org.uk/our-work/res...

Also, "research involving self-reports often leads to fundamentally different results than research focusing on actual behavior in incentivized settings"

2/3

three cartoon characters are sitting in a theater with the words " to the libray yeah ! " Alt: Jimbo, Kearney & Dolph from the Simpsons jump out of their seats and shout " to the library! yeah ! " Library is misspelt, ironically.

Ooh, probably. You’ll have me doing a literature search on a Sunday when I’m supposed to be sorting out a Christmas tree!

Has anyone done something about how we, as children, learn the conventions of any genre? Where do we learn what to expect when a certain kind of music plays in a film, say?

Yes: there’s more of this in children’s media than you might think!

(Consults Google Scholar for Panto Studies)
OH, NO THEY HAVEN’T!
(Checks JSTOR)
OH, YES THEY HAVE!

Which did set me thinking: normally the conventions of Panto only allow for the Dame character to be aware and draw attention to the fact that they’re in a show, right? The action should feel real for the other characters (albeit they’re aware of the audience). Someone’s probably written about this.

Plenty in there for the grownups as well: including a surprisingly postmodern tangent on whether it’s appropriate for the narrator to pursue a romantic relationship with one of the characters.

Enjoyable evening bringing my two boys (who are peak Panto age) to the opening night of Red Riding Hood at @limetreetheatre.bsky.social last night: even allowing for all the anti-Cork jokes.

Ah, I wasn’t aware of that! Some of the group matches were on past my 11-year-old bedtime.

I suppose there were some grim aspects: the Escobar murder and Maradona’s drug test. Still, I imagine it’s remembered fondly in Bulgaria, Romania & Sweden.