University of Galway

My name is Dan Carey.

I'm a professor of English in the University of Galway and president of the Royal Irish Academy.

Dan, I've

wanted to have you on the Ireland podcast for a good while now, and it's a real treat that you're here today.

Talk about them

just very briefly.

We have a project on Irish emigrant letters called Imerca, the Irish word for migration, based in the University of Galway.

It's based on an extraordinary archive that was given to us by Kirby Miller, a great historian of Irish migration.

Well, many things.

I'm based at the Center for Disability Law and Policy at the University of Galway.

And we engage a lot with persons with disabilities in our research, in various forms.

Also, we cooperate with civil society.

Well, many things.

I'm based at the Center for Disability Law and Policy at the University of Galway.

And we engage a lot with persons with disabilities in our research, in various forms.

Also, we cooperate with civil society.

And what I thought might take a couple of weeks has been fascinating.

We're going to spend another couple of months on it, and we've engaged... a lovely guy in the University of Galway.

And we have like a Zoom call every week with him.

So we're literally just creating scenes of when she was a child with her dad, with her mum, been in the bookshop.

yeah it's been fun so that's my goal this year is to really get that to fruition and for her as well I think she really wants to see it and she's done all these paintings so there was a lime kill at the back of the house that her uncle ran and there was a fire that roared in the lime kill so even as a kid looking out the bedroom window she'd see the fire and she was quite terrified of it so that kind of world is gone you know that was died when he died which was 50 years ago I didn't even know they existed or what they were, but they were quite a commercial part of the ecosystem in the building world.

And yeah, so it's been great.

And my writing, I'm loving actually the writing part and having the access to the University of Galway.

and to see how they structure things.

So my connection has been very strong through my dad.

I studied in Boston College and was able to spend six wonderful months at University College Galway at the time.

And I'm really, really blessed to have family here in Ireland.

So I suppose I've grown up loving Ireland very, very much.

Yeah.

And she's also done her PhD, or she's doing it, researching Shannos singing, which is like kind of old-time singing at NUI Galway.

And so this song is very much informed by what I imagine is her being a nerd about things like pronunciation and stories.

There's a few other lyrical sets, like there's a few other famous people who've done this song, and it's always a little different.