Keynote speaker - Dr. Mary Burke
The keynote speaker for the conference will be Mary Burke, Director of the Irish Literature Concentration at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Burke is a scholar of Irish culture and Irish and Irish-American identities, and is the author of “Tinkers”: Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller (OUP).
Special Guest - Maryann Worrell
Maryann Worrell is an artist and educator who employs diverse disciplines, subject matter and tactics in devising works that can generate different kinds of knowledge of landscape, our place in it and our responsibility to the growing need for reform. Her work explores the interactive potential of art as a research tool and its capacity for social and environmental change. She works as an independent artist and/or collaborator on various projects which combine art, science and education.
Crisis Farm: Artist, Maryann Worrell, will discuss her series of participatory works titled, Crisis Farm. Inspired through her studies of ecology and farming in Co. Clare, Ireland, this work takes a critical view of environmental issues, strives to start a conversation and enact change, by breaking down the structure of the average garden to its fundamental elements of seed, soil and water. The sculptural installation expresses the limitations of these resources in a multi-layered system and invites the viewer to explore the subject in an interactive manner, fostering bigger questions about the future of food and our part in it.
Special Guest - Ryan J. Conroy
Ryan J. Conroy, President of the Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area, will close the conference with a presentation entitled "The Irish in Phoenixville." The presentation will provide a concise history of the Irish population in Phoenixville, PA starting from the arrival of the first immigrants in the 1810s living in Sceilp Level to boxing legends in the 1950s. They dug the canal, built the railroad, worked in the mills, and fought in the American Civil War.
