About MSI

In 2018, a community of academics and early career researchers founded Modernist Studies Ireland to foster the sharing of research interests and approaches to Modernism and Modernity. Established at the National University of Ireland Galway, MSI is a forum for exploring the past, present, and future of modernist studies across the island of Ireland and the world.

We now have contributors and partners in institutions throughout the globe. MSI facilitates a community for disseminating new research, promoting discussion and publication, and opening archival holdings to a local and global audience.

The organisation’s global outreach is enhanced by our Annual Conference and Works in Progress seminars, as well as our presence on social media. We are always welcoming new members and contributors, and 2022 has exciting things in store.

W.B. Yeats, A Vision (1937)

OUR OBJECTIVES

  • Communicating and disseminating research considering any issues of modernism and modernity in Ireland and beyond
  • Encouraging discussion of Irish-language writers and speakers and their inclusion in the canon
  • Increasing awareness of the valuable modernism archives in Irish institutions
  • Connecting Irish modernisms with other local/global modernist studies and Irish studies 
  • Recovering missing and lost voices from the modernist canon
  • Fostering interdisciplinary and cross-university research collaborations.
  • Creating a network of scholars to host conferences, workshops, and group discussions.

KEY MOMENTS

On 17 May 2019, NUI Galway hosted the inaugural conference of MSI to bring together researchers from across Ireland and around the world. The conference theme, ‘Modernist Legacies and Futures’, asked for papers to consider how creative figures conceived and constructed their future both within their work and in the material cultures they occupied. The conference marked the official launch of this first formal institutional and personal collaboration of modernist scholars in Ireland. 

The ongoing Works in Progress seminar series brings together scholars of modernism working on any related topic: so far it has featured events hosted and supported by NUI Galway, Maynooth University, and the University of Limerick. 

We run an ongoing Finnegans Wake reading group, details of which are available in the menu bar above.

We encourage all interested parties to participate in the ongoing strategy for Modernist Studies Ireland and to submit ideas for future talks, Works in Progress seminars, conferences, and collaborations of all kinds.