The Children of Achill and Robert Henri History Festival

Ciara Breathnach, MoCI, Associate Professor in History at the University of Limerick, currently holds an Irish Research Council Laureate and a Fulbright Scholar Award. She has a proven track record of research project management and delivery, and has published widely on Irish socio-economic, gender, life cycle and health history.

Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, MoCI, Head of the Department of History at the University of Galway. She is the author/editor of nine books, past President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland and one of the foremost scholars in the history of childhood and youth in Ireland.

Dr John Cunningham is a lecturer in History at the University of Galway. A former editor of Saothar: Journal of Irish Labour History, he is co-Director of the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class. He has published extensively on Irish local history and on global labour history. His most recent book is Hardiman and Beyond: Galway Arts and Culture, 1820-2020 (2023) co-edited with Ciaran McDonough.

Sorcha de Brún lectures in Modern Irish in the University of Limerick, Ireland where she is also Director of European Studies. She received her PhD from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, in 2016 and has published extensively on twentieth and twenty-first century Irish language prose and literary translation. She has published poems and short stories in various anthologies, and a selection of her poetry and stories for children is on the Séideán Sí Primary Curriculum, published by An Gúm. A recipient of the John and Pat Hume Scholarship Award, Duais Foras na Gaeilge (Foras na Gaeilge Award) Duais Ghearrscéalaíochta Mháirtín Uí Chadhain (Máirtín Ó Cadhain Short Story Award) and Oireachtas na Gaeilge literary awards, Sorcha has translated and published a selection of poems by nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century German poets to Irish as part of the Dánnerstag Irish-German poetry project, of which she is co-director. She is also a co-editor of EuropeNow Campus journal and a member of the Royal Irish Academy Committee on Irish language and Celtic Studies (Coiste Léann na Gaeilge agus an Léinn Cheiltigh). Sorcha is currently working on her monograph on masculinities in Irish language prose writing.

Aoife Cawley, MoCI. Completing her Bachelor’s degree in history and politics in UCD, Aoife has recently returned from international research in Berlin, Germany. She is assisting in the festival with special regard to Henri’s contextual backgrounds and Youth Engagement. Her previous experience with conducting local historical projects, working with children and interest in Irish social history makes the Children of Achill and the Robert Henri festival an exciting project for her.

Majella McAllister, MoCI, is the Founding Director of the multi- award-winning Museum of Childhood Ireland. With a background in education, and postgraduate studies at UCD, she specialises in creative, inclusive, collaborative and integrative initiatives. Her ‘Project 2020’ for the MoCI was shortlisted with the Rijksmuseum and the National Gallery of Singapore for International awards. As director of ‘The Children of Achill Island and Robert Henri History Festival’ for the MoCI, she is responsible for team building, concept development and delivery.

Dakota Oliveira, MoCI, Lecturer at University College Cork, is an American historian and anthropologist from Phoenix, Arizona. Dakota specialises in the promotion of marginalised peoples, and is part of the child / youth and inter-generational engagement workshops team. The Children of Achill and Robert Henri initiative is her first of many projects with the MoCI.

Sarah Lavelle, Achill Tourism, is a small business owner in Dooagh, and secretary of Achill Tourism. As a descendant of “Kathleen” & “My Friend Brian” by Robert Henri, she conceptualised this project, realising it’s value to future generations of the Achill community. Having knowledge of the genealogy of Henri’s Achill sitters, Sarah will have a key role within the project; liaising with the research team and the local community.

Jessica Burton- Restrick, MoCI, MA Arts & Culture (Museums & Collections) Leiden University, NL and BA History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin, IE whose specialisation is 19th and early 20th century painting and culture. Jessica will be acting as consultant art historian, curator and contributing writer for the project, with her primary focus being the art historical research and perspective on Robert Henri and his work.

Róisín Kennedy is Lecturer in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at UCD. She is former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland. Her research focuses on the critical reception and display of modern art in Ireland, on the position of women as artists and subjects in modernist art, and on the role of censorship and ideology in the production and patronage of modern art. She is co-editor and contributor to Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State, (Irish Academic Press, 2018), Censoring Art. Silencing the Artwork (I.B.Tauris, 2018) and co-editor (with Fintan Cullen) of Sources in Irish Art 2. A Reader, (CorkUniversity Press, 2021). Her monograph, Art and the Nation State. The Reception of ModernArt in Ireland was published by Liverpool University Press in 2021.

Paula Murphy is an Emeritus Professor in UCD Art History and Cultural Policy. Her publications include Nineteenth-Century Irish Sculpture, Native Genius Reaffirmed (Yale, 2010) and Sculpture 1600-2000, vol. 3 in the RIA Art and Architecture of Ireland (Yale 2015). She was awarded an RHA Gold Medal in 2015. She held a Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC in 2016/17.

Angela Griffith is an assistant professor with the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, TCD and former director of the Irish Art Research Centre. She is currently Principal Investigator for the Cuala Press Project, Schooner Foundation, in partnership with the Library of Trinity College (2020 – 24). She is on the editorial board of the New Hibernia Review and her publications include Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State (2018) (co-editor), and with the National Gallery of Ireland, Making Their Mark Irish Painter-Etchers 1880-1930 (2019).

Chris McCarthy, Achill Tourism, Manager, Achill Tourism. Support will involve volunteering at the planned festival as well as marketing the event across all our social media platforms.

Dorothee Schmid McCoole, MoCI, coordinator of this project, currently working free-lance for a German private museum. Holds an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute in London and an M.Phil. in Public History & Cultural Heritage from Trinity College Dublin. A German native, professional background in the art market and board of management experience in the education sector.