Under the auspices of the research project ‘Classical Influences and Irish Culture’, funded by the European Research Council, this intersectional conference on ‘Irish Migrations and Classical Antiquity’ interrogates how Irish figures have mapped experiences of migration through the lens of classical models from Graeco-Roman antiquity, and also how Irish emigrants may have impacted other cultures with their classical learning. With ‘migration’ broadly defined to include migrations of texts as well as persons, migratory voyages of different types, and migration both within and beyond Ireland, this conference investigates Irish appropriations of literature, art, historiography, and language from classical antiquity in the assertion of varied Irish identities from the medieval period to the twenty-first century.

Following a keynote address by Mary McAleese (President of Ireland, 1997-2011), nine conference panels will cover the following topics: ‘Historiographical Migrations and Medieval Ireland’; ‘Transfers of Knowledge’; ‘Politics of Exile’; ‘Voyages Real and Imagined’; ‘Travel and Imperialism’; ‘Material Culture’; ‘Gender, Sexuality, Class’; ‘Irish Odysseys’; ‘Irish Classicism and the World Stage’.

The conference is endorsed by the Embassy of Ireland, Denmark, and funded by the European Research Council