<< View Bios "A" through "L"

Sr. Margaret Mac Curtain Winner of Living Legacy Award for 1997; human rights advocate and retired Lecturer from the Irish History Department of University College Dublin and retired Professor at the School of Irish Studies, Dublin; feminist activist; writer.

Piaras MacEinri Director of the Irish Centre for Migration Studies, University College Cork; author of “Immigration into Ireland; Trends, Policy Responses, Outlook,” the first part of a research project for European Commission contract (2001).

Malcolm Maclean Director of Proiseacht nan Ealan, the Gaelic Arts Agency, where he is currently developing a major Scottish/Irish visual arts and poetry project, Leabhar Mor na Gaeilge/The Great Book of Gaelic; previous board member of the Columba Initiative/Iomairt Cholmcille; co-founder of Peacock Printmakers and An Lanntair art gallery; curator and editor of the As an Fhearann touring exhibition and book.

Sean MacManus Alderman elected Mayor of Sligo; member of Sinn Féin's ruling Ard Chomhairle and senior member of the party's peace process negotiating team; member of Sligo Corporation and Sligo County Council; member of Sinn Féin since 1976; elected to the Ard Chomhairle in 1981 and served as National Chairperson of the party from 1984 to 1990; played a central part in developing Sinn Féin's current peace strategy; participant in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which was organized by the Irish Government following the IRA cessation of August 1994.

Aodán Mac Póilin   Director of ULTACH Trust, a cross-community Irish language funding body in Northern Ireland; board member of the Columba Initiative; member of An Foras Teanga, the Cross-Border Language Body, Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta, the Council for Irish-Medium Education, and the management committee of the Leabhar Mór na Gaeilge/The Great Book of Gaelic; Irish language editor of Krino; edited Styles of Belonging: the Cultural Identities of Ulster (1992); translations include Ruined Pages, New Selected Poems of Padraic Fiacc (1994); author of  The BBC and the Irish Language (1993) and The Irish language in education in Northern Ireland (1997).

Catherine Marshall First Head of Collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art; author of Irish Art Masterpieces (1995) and Making Visual Art Visible (2002); editor of numerous collections and catalogue essays on contemporary Irish artists; lectured at Trinity College Dublin and the National College of Art and Design; former chairman of the Irish Association of Art Historians; former board member of the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin; currently joint commissioning editor for a history of Irish art of the 20th Century.

Trish McAdam Writer and director of feature and documentary films; work includes the feature Snakes and Ladders, the television documentary series Hoodwinked, and the DV documentary Flirting with the Light; board member of The Irish Film Institute; a founding board member of The Screen Director's Guild of Ireland.

President Mary McAleese President McAleese is the eighth President of Ireland and was inaugurated in 1997. She has previously served as Pro-Vice Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, where she also acted as Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies and Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Penology. A former journalist and presenter with RTÉ (Radio Telefis Eireann) radio, she was a founding member of the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas. Mrs. McAleese was a delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Ireland and to the follow-up Pittsburgh Conference in 1996. She has been director of Channel 4 Television, Northern Ireland Electricity, and the Royal Group of Hospitals Trust. Her longstanding interests include issues of justice, equality, social inclusion, anti-sectarianism, and reconciliation. President McAleese has made “Building Bridges” the theme of her Presidency.

Inez McCormack First woman President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, a labor movement that covers the whole of Ireland; chairperson of the Congress’ Anti-Racism Task Force; member of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and Regional Secretary of UNISON, Britain's biggest trade union.

Frank McCourt Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes (1996),‘Tis (2000), and the forthcoming Brotherhood (2002); winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the LA Times Award; a teacher for twenty-seven years in various New York City public schools, the last seventeen of which were spent at Stuyvesant High School in Manhatten; born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, and raised in Limerick, Ireland.

Chris McGimpsey Belfast City Councilor representing Loyalist West Belfast; active member of the Ulster Unionist Party for over 25 years; Honorary Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council; served as a member of his party’s delegation to the constitutional talks on the future of Northern Ireland; provided evidence to the New Ireland Forum in 1983 and challenged the Anglo Irish Agreement before the Irish High Court, which took the matter to the Irish Supreme Court; member of the New Consensus, the Peace Train, and the Ultach Trust.

Declan McGonagle Director of the Dublin City Arts Centre; first Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, beginning in 1991; founding Director of the Orchard Gallery in Derry; former Director of Exhibitions, Institute for Contemporary Art, London; short-listed for the Tate Gallery’s Turner Prize in 1987; contributing editor of Artforum; has selected and curated numerous international exhibitions and projects in Ireland and Britain; lectures regularly on contemporary art and museum issues.  Project Consultant.

Susan McKay Author of Northern Protestants:  An Unsettled People (2000) and Sophia’s Story (1998); staff journalist with Ireland’s Sunday Tribune; recently named Irish Print Journalist of the Year; featured in the forthcoming Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing; regular radio and television commentator for Radio Telefis Eireann; 2001 recipient of the Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Journalism; a founder of the Belfast Rape Crisis Center.  Project Consultant.

Martin McLoone Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and former Head of the School of Media and Performing Arts, University of Ulster, Coleraine; has contributed to and edited Television and Irish Society (1984), Culture, Identity and Broadcasting  in Ireland (1991), Border Crossing: Film in Ireland, Britain and Europe (1995), and Big Picture, Small Screen (1996).  Author of Irish Film – The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema (2000).  Project Consultant.

Robbie McVeigh Derry-based human rights activist and researcher on racism and sectarianism, equality and human rights; author of Harassment--It’s Part of Life Here: Policing and Young People in Northern Ireland (1994), Travelers, Refugees and Racism in Tallaght (1998), A Place of Welcome? Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Northern Ireland (2002), Between Reconciliation and Pacification: The British State and Community Relations in the North of Ireland (2002), and Irish Travellers and Nomadism (forthcoming 2003); co-editor, with Ronit Lentin, of Racism and Anti-racism in Ireland (2002).

Peter McVerry, SJ Jesuit Priest; born in Northern Ireland; has worked mainly with homeless young people; runs three hostels and a residential drug detox center; Director of the Children’s Legal Centre; has worked in the inner city and in Ballymum, a high-rise estate in the suburbs of Dublin.

Paula Meehan Author of several books of poetry, including Dharmakaya (2000), winner of the Denis Devlin Memorial Award of the Irish Arts Council; Mysteries of the Home (1991); Pillow Talk (1994) and The Man Who Was Marked By Winter (1991) were both short-listed for the Irish Times Irish Literature Award;recepient of the Butler Award for Poetry from the Irish American Cultural Institute and the Marten Toonder Award for Literature; author of the play Cell and other theatre pieces, including work for TEAM, Ireland’s premier theater-in-education company; has written poetry for film,  contemporary dance companies, and visual artists; her poems have been put to music by contemporary composers such as Fergus Johnson and John Wolf Brennan; member, Aosdána.

Kerby Miller Middlebush Professor of History, University of Missouri, Columbia; visiting Professor of Irish History, Glucksman Ireland House, New York University, 2002; author of Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1985); co-author (with Paul Wagner) of Out of Ireland: The Story of Irish Immigration to America (1997); author of the forthcoming Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815  (2003);  finalist, Pulitzer Prize, 1986.  Project Consultant.

Ed MoloneyJournalist and author who has written for the Washington Post, The Economist, and The Guardian; elected Irish Journalist of the Year in 1999; has spent two decades writing about the IRA, first as Northern Ireland Editor of The Irish Times and then as Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune; gained unprecedented access to the IRA while researching his recent book A Secret History of the IRA (2002).

Mick Moloney Philadelphia-based academic folklorist, musician, and recording artist; public radio and television host; scholar and promoter of Irish musical interchange with America; co-founder of the “The Green Fields of America” touring group; music/humanities consultant for PBS program Out of Ireland; best tenor banjo player in U.S. – Frets magazine; National Heritage Fellowship, 1999; Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 2000; author of Far From the Shamrock Shore (2002), a book and cd.  Project Consultant.

Bruce Molsky Outstanding old-time fiddler; high-spirited guitarist, banjoist and singer; his music melds archaic mountain sounds of Appalachia, the power of blues, and the rhythmic intricacies of traditional African music; tours with Fiddlers 4 and Mozaik; has been featured several times on “A Prairie Home Companion”; his solo recording Poor Man’s Troubles won a 2001 “Indie” award for Best Traditional Folk Recording; Darol Anger has dubbed him “The Rembrandt of Appalachian Fiddling,” and Sing Out! says his fiddling “combines precision and abandon so perfectly that it raises the hairs on the back of your neck.”

Michael Montgomery Former Professor of English, University of South Carolina; has written extensively on the Ulster Scots language in Ireland and on Scots-Irish language or dialect in America, in their historical as well as cultural/linguistic contexts.

Maureen Murphy Grant Administrator for the Great Irish Famine project; editor of Annals of the Famine in Ireland (1997); professor, Department of Curriculum and Teaching, Hofstra University Department of Education.

Tomas O Cathasaigh Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Irish Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature at Harvard University; author of The Heroic Biography of Cormac mac Airt  (1977) and of articles on early Irish literature, mythology, and language.

Pádhraic Ó Ciardha Deputy Director of TG4, Ireland's Irish language television service, who played a leading role in its creation; Vice Chair of the Irish Audiovisual Federation; board member of the Celtic Film and Television Festival; former member of the Irish Government's Strategy Review Group for the Future of the Film Industry; former Irish Language Broadcasting Policy Advisor to two successive Government Ministers (Michael D Higgins and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn); established and served as correspondent for RTE’s Raidió na Gaeltachta bureau in Dublin; native speaker of Irish from Connemara; past scholar at the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies and Lecturer in Irish at St Patrick's College Maynooth.

Seosamh O Cuaig Native Irish speaker from Connemara; founding member of the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement; producer in the Gaeltacht Radio Station; elected Independent member of the Gaeltacht Development Authority.

Liz O'DonnellT.D. for Dublin South and Chief Whip of the Progressive Democrats; former Minister of State to the Government and Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, representing the Irish Government at the multi-party talks which culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998; previously served as Vice Chair of the Women's Political Association and delegate to the National Women's Council.

Rory O’Donnell Director of the National Economic and Social Council of Ireland and Chief Officer of the newly established National Economic and Social Development Office; as Economist and later Director at NESC, prepared the analysis that underpins Ireland’s social partnership approach to economic and social policy and has written extensively on partnership; formerly Jean Monet Professor of Business at the Smurfit Business School, University College Dublin; edited a review of Ireland’s first 25 years in the EU, Europe – The Irish Experience (2000) and co-authored Europe’s Experimental Union: Rethinking Integration (2000).

Niall O’DowdJournalist and founding publisher of the Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America magazine; with other Irish American spokespersons, played a leading role in forwarding U.S. involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Brendan O’Leary Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict; co-author of Policing Northern Ireland: Proposals for a New Start (1999) and The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland (1996).

Nuala O’Loan Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland; former Senior Lecturer holding the Jean Monnet Chair in European Law at the University of Ulster; former Chairman of the Northern Ireland Consumer Committee for Electricity, member of the Police Authority, Vice-Chair of the Police Authority’s Community Relation Committee, and legal expert member of the European Commission’s Consumer’s Consultative Council; a qualified solicitor with a longstanding interest in matters of law, the police, and consumer rights.

Cathal O Searcaigh Irish poet who writes in Irish about the countryside in Donegal, where he lives; his translated collections include Suibhne (“Sweeney”), An Bealach ‘na Bhaile (“Homecoming”) (1993), and Out in the Open (1997); described by The Irish Times as one of Ireland’s “finest working poets,” O Searcaigh, calls Irish “the language of my soul” and the act of writing a process of “re-possessing tongue and tradition.”

Michael O’Suilleabhain Pianist and composer; founder, director, and first Chair of Music at the Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick; author of The Bodhran; former music professor at the University of County Cork; recent albums and singles include Oilean/Island, Dolphin’s Way, Michael O’Suilleabhain, and Between Two Worlds: The Music of Michael O’Suilleabhain; has appeared on several Irish compilation albums, along with musicians like John Williams and Andy Irvine.

Fintan O’Toole Irish Times journalist and drama critic;  Irish Journalist of the Year, 1993;  drama critic, The New York Daily News (1997-2000); author of The Ex-Isle of Erin: Images of a Global Ireland (1996),  Traitor’s Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1997),  The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities (1998), and The Irish Times Book Of the Century (1999).  Project Consultant.

Jahan Ramazani Professor of English at the University of Virginia; living editor of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Third Edition (2003); published works include The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English (2001), Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (1994), and Yeats and the Poetry of Death: Elegy, Self-Elegy, and the Sublime (1990); recipient of the Mayo Distinguished Teaching Professorship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH Fellowship, and the William Riley Parker Prize of the MLA.

Brid RodgersFounding member and current Deputy Leader of the SDLP; elected Party Chairperson in 1978, becoming the first woman to chair a political party in Ireland; previously served as General Secretary of the SDLP, member of the Senate of the Republic of Ireland, District Councillor on Craigavon Borough Council, leader of the SDLP Council Group, and member of the Northern Ireland Assembly; former Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, widely acclaimed for her handling of the Foot and Mouth crisis in 2001; elected to and appointed chairperson of the SDLP political negotiations for the Upper Bann constituency; former recipient of the 2002 Channel 4 “Politician of the Year “ Award.

David Roediger Kendrick Babcock Professor of History at University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign; author of Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and Working Class History (1994) and The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991).

Annie Ryan Director, actor, and founder of The Corn Exchange;
a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts; former member of Chicago’s New Crime Productions, which specialized in Commedia dell’Arte; work with The Corn Exchange includes Cultural Shrapnel, Streetcar, Big Bad Woolf, Baby Jane, Car Show, The Seagull, and Michael West’s A Play on Two Chairs and Foley; performer in theatre, film, and television in Ireland; collaborates with practitioners on an international basis as a performer, director, and teacher.

Tommy Sands Well-known Northern Ireland singer, songwriter, and storyteller, known for his songs about the violence in Northern Ireland; songwriter for the Irish folk group “The Sands Family” in the sixties and seventies; best known songs include “There Were Roses,” “Daughters and Sons,” and “All the Little Children.”

Robert Scally Professor of History and Director of Glucksman Ireland House at New York University; author of The End of Hidden Ireland (1994), The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition (1975), Force of Order and Movement in Europe Since 1815  (1976), and the forthcoming American Irish Desk Reference.

Helen Shaw First woman appointed to the executive board of RTÉ, when she became Head of Radio Services in 1997; founded and launched RTÉ's classical music station, Lyric FM; former journalist with The Irish Times, RTÉ, and the BBC; recipient of the Gold Sony award; awarded the Journalist in Europe scholarship; served, in 1994, as an international observer to the first South African multi-racial elections; currently a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, researching the connection between information, mass media, and democracy and the role public broadcasting plays in civil society.

Lenwood Sloan African-American choreographer, dancer, actor, and arts activist of Irish descent; formerly a director of minority arts programs at the NEA; his great-great-grandfather was an Irish slaveholder; perhaps the only African male ever to dance in the World Championship of Irish Step Dance; producer and irector of Voodoo MacBeth.

SolasThis quintet has been described by Earl Hitchner in the Irish Echo as “able to play traditional music with the best of them and also perform original music with exceptional style and imagination.”  Seamus Egan, John Williams, Winifred Horan, John Doyle, and singer Karen Casey, comprise, Hitchner says, “one of the most exciting Irish bands anywhere in the world.”  Their albums include The Hour Before Dawn, Solas, Sunny Spells and Scattered Showers, and The Words that Remain.

Gerard Stembridge Award-winning writer-director; his latest feature film, About Adam, was critically acclaimed and a popular success in Ireland; his recent RTE program Black Day at Black Rock focuses on Irish racism; he wrote the screenplay for the film Ordinary Decent Criminal and was writer-director of the highly acclaimed film Guiltrip (1995).

Rod Stoneman Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board since 1993; Deputy Commission Editor for Independent Film and Video at England’s Channel Four Television, 1985-’93; directing credits include Ireland: the Silent Voices.

Abel Ugba Journalist and author from Nigeria who has lived and worked in Ireland since 1998; co-founder and editor of Metro Eireann, Ireland’s first multicultural newspaper; author of the fictional Dear Mama … An African Refugee Writes Home; formerly with the Dublin-based Evening Herald and The Irish Times group; presently comparing the development of new African communities in Dublin and in Nuremberg, Germany, for doctoral program at Trinity College, Dublin; also developing a profile and conducting a needs analysis of African immigrants in Dublin; most recent publication surveyed ethnic minority media in Ireland as part of an EU-wide survey of ethnic minorities and their media.

Ed Ward Founder and former director of the Milwaukee Irish Fest, called by the Smithsonian’s National Folk Life Program “the largest and best Irish cultural event in America”; founder of the Irish Fest Foundation and the John J. Ward Irish Music Archives, the largest public collection of Irish and Irish American music in America; founder and member of the Irish band Blarney; an attorney with over thirty years’ experience in the business of music; a record distributor, concert promoter, and consultant to Irish festivals throughout the U.S.; first vice-president of Morgan Stanley.

Michael WestPlaywright; has written several plays and adaptations for The Corn Exchange, including Foley, The Seagull, and A Play On Two Chairs; works for the National Theatre include Monkey, a version of The Marriage of Figaro, and a recently completed new play, The Evidence of Things; adapted the screenplay of Nabokov’s Lolita, which played in the Peacock Theatre in co-production with the Abbey Theatre and The Corn Exchange.

Christopher WhelanResearch Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin; Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the Social Sciences of the European Science Foundation; associate editor of the European Sociological Review; joint author of Understanding Contemporary Ireland (1990) and Social Class and Social Mobility in Ireland (1996); joint editor of The Development of Industrial Society in Ireland (1992), Ireland North and South: Perspectives from Social Science (1999), and Bust to Boom: The Irish Experience of Growth and Inequality (2000); current projects include the Living in Ireland Panel Survey and the European Community household Panel Study.

Richard White MacArthur Fellow and Margaret Byrne Professor of History at Stanford University; leading historian of the American West; author of Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family's Past (1998) – about the intertwining of history and memory, focusing on his mother, Sarah Walsh, who emigrated from Ireland to the United States – and “It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own”— A New History of the American West (1993).

William H. A. Williams Faculty member of the Gantz Undergraduate Center of the Union Institute; former Project Director for the Organization of American Historians; author of ‘Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream:  The Image of the Irish in American Song Lyrics for Parlor and Stage, 1800—1920 (1996); North American Correspondent for Irish Music Magazine; writes articles for Midwest Irish News; has lectured on Irish-American vaudeville and Tin-Pan-Alley songs.

John WilsonDirector of the Institute for Ulster-Scots Studies and Professor of Communication, University of Ulster at Magee; former Dean of the Faculty of Social and Health Sciences and Head of the School of Psychology and Communication; author of Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language (1990); co-editor of the journal TEXT; editor, Narratives of Everyday Life in Europe.