An interview with literature scholar Marie Mianowski Economic analysis has no monopoly on how to examine economic history. The death of the Celtic Tiger is a phenomenon that can be represented in graphs, in tables, in charts, and also in prose. Irish novelists have taken to the page to account for what life was like on… Read more »

Henry Silke Dr Henry Silke serves as Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Limerick’s School of English, Irish and Communication and directs the school’s MA and Graduate Diploma in Journalism. Ten years on from the property and banking crash many of the same issues still set the news agenda. Property continues to make the… Read more »

Sadhbh O’Neill Sadhbh O’Neill is a PhD candidate and Government of Ireland Scholar based at the School of Politics and International Relations, UCD. Introduction Climate policy falls into that strange category of things government does not want to do, but must do. There are no (or few) votes in it. Doing it properly entails more… Read more »

Cian O’Callaghan Cian O’Callaghan is Assistant Professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin. His recent research, which was funded by the IRC, has concerned the impacts of Ireland’s property bubble and associated crisis, with a particular focus on housing. What your sandwich says about you In a well-known advert for Bank of Ireland, a young… Read more »

As a society, Ireland puts effort into remembering. Orchestrated campaigns have been launched for the “decade of commemorations,” as we mark the centenary of the decisive events, from the 1913 Lock-out to the cessation of the Civil War in 1923, that established modern Ireland. Yet right in the middle of that period, in 2018, we… Read more »

Catherine Devitt Introduction The September 2015 issue of Working Notes had as its main theme, ‘Caring for our Common Home’,1 exploring aspects of our relationship with the natural environment, while providing a strong moral argument for taking urgent action in response to threats to our environment, including those arising from climate change. Simply put, climate… Read more »

Catherine Devitt Introduction It’s going to impact the rest of my life; the kinds of decisions I can make, the kind of world can live in. It’s going to augment other social problems which we already have. Our lives are not going to look like our parents’ lives, because of climate change.1 The young adults… Read more »

James Doorley Introduction On the day of his election as An Taoiseach (June 14th 2017), Leo Varadkar T.D. spoke about creating a ‘republic of opportunity’.1 Although an admirable vision for the country, the evidence suggests that Irish society has a long way to go to make such noble ambitions a reality, particularly for unemployed young… Read more »

Dr. Tony Bates Introduction When ‘Deirdre’ arrived to see me with her mother, my first impression was of a young woman with a warm smile and not a problem in the world. She was twenty-three years old, already the mother of two. As she checked out my office, I wondered if she was happy to… Read more »

Kevin O’Higgins SJ Introduction A lifetime of working with young adults has left me in no doubt that inequalities associated with the circumstances of our birth are more than likely to lead to successive waves of inequality that may accompany us throughout the remainder of our lives. This is true whether we are born into… Read more »