donegal diaspora Comhairle Contae pobal Dhun na nGall domhanda Donegal County Council Donegal"' Irish Diaspora Conference • s one donegal: many pasts • one future Speaker Biographies Cllr. Frank McBrearty, Mayor of the County of Donegal Mayor of Donegal Cllr. Frank McBrearty Jnr was elected to the Stranorlar Electoral Area of Donegal County Council in June 2009 as a Labour Party candidate. Cllr. McBrearty is a member of both the Planning and Economic Development Strategic Policy Committee and the Water, Environment & Emergency Strategic Policy Committee and is also currently the Chair of Donegal County Councils Corporate Policy Group. Cllr. McBrearty is also a member of Donegal County Development Board . and HSE West Regional forum. Frank comes from a business background and is married with a family of four. He has strong family links with America, Australia and Scotland and is proud to be Mayor in the Year of the Gathering. Mr. Seamus Neely, Manager Donegal County Council Seamus Neely is the County Manager of Donegal County Council. Seamus started his public service career with Donegal County Council before moving to various roles in Cavan and Monaghan Urban District Councils followed by ten years at Cavan County Council. He returned to Donegal County Council in late 2008 as a Director of Service with responsibility for the Water, Environment and Emergency Services. He took up the post of Donegal County Manager in July 2010. Seamus has a keen interest in the development of the economy of County Donegal in particular through best use of natural resources and the promotion of micro enterprise. Seamus holds an honours degree in Business Studies from University of Ulster and an MBA from Dublin City University. He is currently the Chairman of the Donegal County Enterprise Board. Seamus is married to Anne and they live in Letterkenny with their four children. 2 Professor Paul Arthur, University of Ulster Paul Arthur, former Professor of Politics and Director of the Graduate Programme in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ulster. He holds a BA and MSc from Queen's University Belfast and a D.Litt. from the National University of Ireland. He is the author of five books - including Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland problem {2001) - and circa seventy peer reviewed articles. He has extensive media experience in Ireland, Britain and the United States including two years as an op-ed writer for the Irish Times as well as being Ulster Television's regular political analyst. He has contributed to the Times, New York Times, Observer, Sunday Independent and Guardian. He has lectured extensively in Europe and the United States. In 1997-98 he held a Senior Fellowship at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington DC where his research was in Track Two Diplomacy. He was the Jefferson Smurfit Distinguished Fellow in Irish Studies at the University of Missouri (2000). For six months in 2007 he was a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University. He has acted in a consultancy capacity for the United Nations Research Institute in Social Development (UNRISD) on political violence; the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at the House of Commons on an enquiry on "Dealing With The Past"; and with the World Bank for the World Development Report {2010). He sits on a number of International Advisory Boards including the "Project on Justice in Times of Transition in Boston, "Fusion" in Bogota, "The Global Majority" in Monterey (Ca), and the Board of the Edward Moore Kennedy Conflict Intervention Centre at NUIM. He has been involved in a series of problem-solving workshops in Colombia, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Palestine and Macedonia. In the past he has been involved in background discussions with the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and delegations from Georgia, Iraq and Israel/Palestine when they have visited Northern Ireland. Since 1990 he has participated in many Track Two initiatives with Northern Ireland's political parties in Europe, the United States and South Africa. 3 6 ' An Dr Nollaig Muraile, Roinn na Gaeilge, Aras na Gaeilge, Ollscoil na hEireann, Gaillimh Born Knock, Co. Mayo, in 1948. Graduate of St Patrick's College, Maynooth (now NUI Maynooth), with BA in Celtic Studies, 1970; MA in Old and Middle Irish Language and Literature, 1971, and PhD in Irish, 1991. Worked for more than twenty years (1972-93) on the staff of the Placenames Branch, Ordnance Survey of Ireland. Was eleven years (1993-2004) on the staff of the Department of Celtic, Queen's University, Belfast, during which time he was also Director of Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, and since 2004 has lectured in Irish at NUI Galway. A member of the Irish Placenames' Commission 2003-12, and of the Governing Board, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, since 2005. Until recently a member of the Board of the National Museum of Ireland. Elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2009. Spent more than thirty years editing the genealogical work of Dubhaltach Mac Fhir Bhisigh - whose life and work was the subject of his doctoral thesis, and of his major monograph, The Celebrated Antiquary, Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (c. 1600-1671): His Lineage, Life and Learning (1996; 2nd ed. 2002). This resulted in the five-volume work, Leabhar M6r na nGenealach: The Great Book of Irish Genealogies compiled by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (running to more than 3,500 pages), which was published in 2003-4. Other major productions include Irish Leaders and Learning through the Ages, a collection of the writings of Fr Paul Walsh (2003), and Turas na dTaoiseach nUltach as Eirinn: From Rath Maol6in to Rome, a re-edition of Tadhg 6 Cianain's Irish text along with a translation to English of the commentary by Tomas 6 Fiaich on that fateful episode in Irish history. The latter work was published in 2007 as part of the commemoration of the 'Departure of the Earls'. He has published extensively in both Irish and English on various aspects of Irish history and of literature in Irish - especially the manuscript tradition. These publications include a lengthy introduction to a reprint of the Annals of Ulster (1998), an introduction to a reprint of Eugene O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (1996), and a collection of material on the Franciscan College, Louvain, entitled Micheal 6 Cleirigh, His Associates and St Anthony's College, Louvain (2008). Among his many other publications are six contributions to the series Leachtaf Chaim Cille (1972, 1973; 1993, 1995, 1997, 2004), including items on Agallamh na Seanorach, on the Connacht manuscript tradition and on the life and work of John O'Donovan. A former editor of Ainm: The Bulletin of the Ulster Place-Name Society, he has also published in several other journals, including Eigse, Celtica, Studio Hibernica, and lrisleabhar Mh6 Nuad (1971, 1972, 1990, 2000, 2005), as well as contributing chapters to numerous books. 4 Professor Tom Devine OBE, Director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at Edinburgh Tom Devine was educated at the University of Strathclyde and graduated with first class honours in Economic and Social History, followed by a PhD and D.Litt. He rose through the academic ranks from assistant lecturer to Reader, Professor, Head of Department, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He was Deputy Principal of the University from 1993 until 1997. In 1998 he accepted the Directorship of the world's first Centre of advanced research in Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen (the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies), which was formally inaugurated by President Mary McAleese of Ireland on St Andrew's Day 1999. Over the following five years, over £2.5m were raised for the Centre's research programmes from AHRC -which led to the establishment of the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, funded competitively over 2 phases, - the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy, and a further £1.6m endowment gifted from the Glucksman family in the USA for a Research Chair in Irish and Scottish Studies, which Devine held as founding Professor until 2005. In April 2005, he was appointed to the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, the world's oldest and most distinguished Chair of Scottish History, which he took up in January 2006. From 2008 he was Director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at Edinburgh, established by an external endownment of £1 million stg. by a leading Scottish fund manager and his family. This is reckoned to be the single largest private donation ever made to a UK university for the development of historical studies. Devine retired from the Fraser Chair in the summer of 2011 but returned to employment by invitation at the University of Edinburgh in January 2012 to a Personal Senior Research Chair of History which was especially founded for this purpose. He is a Visiting Professor at two North American universities. Devine is the author or editor of some three dozen books and close to 100 articles on topics as diverse as emigration, famine, identity, Scottish transatlantic commercial links, urban history, the economic history of Scotland, Empire, the Scottish Highlands, the Irish in Scotland, sectarianism, stability and protest in the 18th century nation, Scottish elites, the Anglo-Scottish Union, rural social history, the global impact of the Scottish people and comparative Irish and Scottish relationships. The Scottish Nation (1999) became an international bestseller, selling nearly 60,000 copies to date in the UK alone( and for a short period even outselling the adventures of Harry Potter in Scotland!).His most recent major publication is The Scotland Trilogy, a three volume study of the Scots at home and abroad since the sixteenth century published by Penguin in 2012. Devine has won all three major prizes for Scottish historical research (Hume Brown, Saltire and the Henry Duncan Prize and Lectureship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh), is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, elected 1992, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, 5 elected 2001, and a Fellow of the British Academy, elected 1994: the only humanities and social sciences scholar elected to all three of these national academies in the British Isles. Professor Devine holds the honorary degrees of D.Litt. from Queen's University Belfast and the University of Abertay Dundee and the honorary degree of D.Univ from Strathclyde. In 2006 he was awarded the first John Aikenhead Medal for services to Scottish education by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland and in the same year Bell College (now part of the University of the West of Scotland) conferred on him an Honorary Fellowship in recognition of his contributions to Scottish culture. In 2000 he was awarded the Royal Gold Medal, Scotland's supreme academic accolade, by Queen Elizabeth 11, the only historian winner to date, and in 2005 was appointed OBE in the New Years Honours List for 'services to Scottish history'. In 2012 Devine won the Senior Royal Society of Edinburgh/Beltane Prize for Excellence in Public Engagement across all disciplines and in that year too was awarded the Society's Inaugural Sir Walter Scott Senior Prize for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts. Tom Devine has a high media profile both at home and abroad, regularly contributing articles and comments to UK and foreign newspapers and often appearing on TV and radio historical and current affairs programmes. 'Professor Tom Devine is as close to our national bard as the nation has'. The Times 24.01.2013 6 Dr Ian Adamson QBE, President of the Ullans Academy Cllr Ian Adamson OBE is a former Lord Mayor of Belfast. He is a member of the Ulster Unionist Party and is a retired medical doctor. A Councillor on Belfast City Council from 1989 until 2011, Adamson was Lord Mayor in 1996. He studied at Bangor Grammar School then Queen's University Belfast becoming a registrar in paediatrics at the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children and the Ulster Hospital. He speaks ten languages, including Scots, Lakota Sioux and Swahili. He is founder Chair of the Ulster-Scots Language Society, and remains a Vice-President. In liaison with Professor Robert Gregg in 1992, he founded the Ulster-Scots (Ullans) Academy. He is the author of several books on subjects such as folk poetry, history and religion. He is the author of The Cruthin (1974), laying claims to Ulster descent from a pre-Gaelic people in Ireland. He also wrote The Identity of Ulster (1982), and other works dealing with the ethnology of a group of pre-Celtic settlers in Ulster whose mentality is said to pervade the modern province. He is President of Belfast Civic Trust, founder Chair of The Somme Association, founder secretary of the Farset Youth and Community Development, Belfast. Adamson is also a former member of the Boards of many other local public sector and voluntary organisations, including The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Ulster Museum, The Titanic Trust, The Eastern Health and Social Services Board, The Ultach Trust and a serving Brother, Venerable Order of Saint John. Works .. Cruthin: The Ancient Kindred, (Newtownards: Nosmada 1974) ISBN 0-9503461-0-1 • Oalaradia, Kingdom of the Cruthin, ISBN 0-948868-26-0 • Identity of Ulster: The Land, the Language and the People, (Belfast : Pretani 1982, 2nd edn. 1987) ISBN 0-948868-04-X • Bangor, Light of the world, (Bangor: Fairview Press 1979) ISBN 0-948868-06-6 • [ed.,] Sir Samuel Ferguson, Congal ([q. pub.] 1980) • The Battle of Moira, (Newtownards: Nosmada 1980) • Ulster People: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, (Bangor: Pretani Press 1991) ISBN 0-948868- 13-9 • 1690: William and the Boyne, (1995) See also David Hume, David McDowell, eds., Cuchulain: The Lost Legend (Belfast 1994). Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East In office 25 June 1998 - 26 November 2003 Personal details Born 1944 (age 68-69) Political party Ulster Unionist Party 7 Dr Patrick Fitzgerald, Mellon Centre for Migration Studies Ulster American Folk Park Dr. Paddy Fitzgerald joined the curatorial department of the Ulster-American Folk Park in Northern Ireland in 1990. In 1994 he obtained his doctorate from the Queen's University of Belfast. He acted as curator of a major permanent exhibition entitled 'Emigrants', which opened in 1994. He has published many articles on various aspects of Irish migration and co-authored with Dr. Brian Lambkin a book entitled Migration in Irish History 1607-2007 published with Palgrave in 2008. Since 1996 he has been teaching a Queen's University Belfast Masters course in Irish Migration Studies within the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, to which he was seconded in February 1998 and been employed permanently there since 1998. He has also acted as a consultant to a number of television series including 'The Irish Empire' which examined the phenomenon of the Irish Diaspora and 'On Eagle's Wing', which sought to tell the story of the Ulster-Scots/Scotch-Irish. He is a member of the editorial board of History Ireland and a member of the Committee of the William Carleton Society. In 2012 he had a paper on Scottish migration to Ulster in the seventeenth century published in the Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford, 2012). He has presented talks and lectures to a wide range of audiences in Ireland, Britain, Europe and North America. Professor David M. Emmons, Emeritus Professor of History University of Montana Dave Emmons was born in Denver, Colorado; he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 1967, he joined the History Department at the University of Montana, retiring as Professor in 2007. He is the author of three books, Garden in the Grasslands (1969); The Butte Irish (1989); and Beyond the American Pale (2010). The Butte Irish won the Robert G. Athearn Prize given by the Western History Association and it and Beyond the American Pale were both given Honorable Mention for the James S. Donnelly Prize of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Dave and his wife Caroline live along Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana, 120 miles northwest and downstream of Butte--the capital of Irish America. 8 Frank Galligan Writer & Broadcaster A native of County Donegal, Frank Galligan is a columnist with the Donegal Democrat and a presenter with Highland Radio. He is a published poet and short story writer, his books including 'Out of the Blue' and 'A Strong Weakness'. A former winner of the McCrea and Walter Allen Awards for Literature, he is a schools creative writing facilitator with The Pushkin Trust and Poetry Ireland. He is well known as an MC at the Derry Big Band and Jazz Festival, The Johnny Keenan International Banjo Festival and is resident MC at the annual Bluegrass Festival in the Ulster-American Folk Park in Omagh. He has extensively researched the musical links between the north-west of Ireland and what became Bluegrass music in the US Professor Angela McCarthy, Professor of Scottish and Irish History and Associate Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand Angela McCarthy is Professor of Scottish and Irish History and Associate Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago where she teaches Irish and Scottish migration, modern Irish history, and modern Scottish history. She has published widely on the personal experiences of Irish (and Scottish) migration and has just completed a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden funded project on migration, ethnicity, and madness. 9 Kevin Cullen Boston Globe Columnist & co author of New York Times bestseller 'Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster' and co-author 'Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church' Kevin Cullen is an author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has written for The Boston Globe since 1985. At the Globe, he served as a local, national and foreign correspondent before becoming a columnist. He initially worked as the newspaper's law enforcement correspondent, and in 1987 won a Livingston Award for his portrait of an East Boston hoodlum. He spent several stints on the Spotlight Team, the Globe's investigative unit, and was part of the team that in 1988 exposed the mobster James "Whitey" Bulger as an FBI informant. He spent more than 20 years covering the conflict in Northern Ireland, more than any other American journalist, and in 1994 was honored by the Overseas Press Club of America for his interpretive reporting from Northern Ireland. In 1997, he was appointed as the Globe's Dublin bureau chief, covering the peace process in Northern Ireland fulltime. He was described by The Irish Times as "the most informed American journalist on Irish affairs," while the media critic at The Independent of London called him "the most astute observer of Irish affairs in the American media." After a year in Dublin, he moved to London to serve as the paper's chief European correspondent, covering the war in the former Yugoslavia. He reported from more than 20 countries across Europe. In 2001, after four years abroad, he returned to Boston and joined the Globe's investigative team which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 for exposing the coverup of sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests. The team also won many other awards for those exposes, including the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the George Polk Award for National Reporting, and the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. In 2007, he was promoted to metro columnist and the following year won the Batten Medal from the American Society of Newspaper Editors for a selection of columns on people down on their luck. A selection of columns he wrote in 2010 won first place in the National Headliners Awards. His columns highlighting the suicide of a 15-year-old 10