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Ciarán Walsh (second form the left) with the members of the panel that was convened for the defence of his PhD Thesis in January 2020.
Ciarán Walsh :
curator | researcher | anthropologist
Ciaran Walsh founded www.curator.ie in 2010 as a vehicle for experimental curatorial projects in the areas of photography and film, gradually moving from the focus of his work from contemporary visual arts to visual anthropology.
The move began with an internationally acclaimed exhibition on the photography of John Millington Synge, which he followed in 2012 with the groundbreaking exhibition of ethnographic photographs from the albums of Charles R. Browne, the Irish “Head-hunter”, a project that he developed in partnership with Dr Dáithí de Mordha.
This led to an equally groundbreaking study of the photography of Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940), a five year project that was supported by the Irish Research Council. Haddon, according to Walsh, developed a politically radical and formally innovative photo-ethnographic practice in the west of Ireland between 1890 and 1895; a description that represents a formidable challenge to conventional histories of anthropology, ethnology, and folklore collection in Ireland during this period.
Walsh became an anthropologist in January 2020, when he defended his thesis on the skull-measuring business in Ireland. In March 2020, he was awarded a PhD in Anthropology by Maynooth University. His work as a curator, researcher, and anthropologist has entered a new and exciting post-doctoral phase.
Doctoral Research
Ciarán Walsh’s doctoral research was funded by the Irish Research Council over a four year period, commencing in 2015 and ending in 2019. Additional funding was provided by Shanahan Research Group. He studied at Maynooth University (Anthropology) and carried out his “fieldwork” in the Dun Chaoin, the Aran Islands, Connemara, Cambridge University Library, the Haddon Library, and the “Old” Anatomy Dept. in TCD.
His findings constitute a radical re-interpretation of Alfred Cort Haddon’s contribution to the development of modern anthropology in Ireland and England. He has recast Haddon as an anti-imperialist who regarded the study of folk-lore as a way of humanising and socialising Victorian anthropology.
This provides a novel vantage point from which to study the emergence of a radical folk-lore movement within anarchist and solidarist networks in geography and sociology in the 1890s, discarding conventional accounts of the relationship between folklore collection, ethnology, and anthropology in favour of an “Irish” reading of Haddon’s papers and associated records, especially his pioneering work as an ethnographic photographer and cinematographer.
His research draws on significant new and unpublished material–discovered in Cambridge and Dublin in 2013 and 2014–to reveal the extent to which a historiographical preoccupation with biological/evolutionary narratives has distorted contemporary accounts of Haddon’s involvement in the development of folk-lore studies in Ireland.
Furthermore, it configures Haddon’s modernist treatment of folk-lore as a formally innovative call for solidarity with the victims of colonisation and “civilisation,” which moves the study of folk communities and their customs beyond evolutionism and nationalism and into a radical engagement with issues of globalisation, habitat destruction, and genocide.
This places Haddon’s work at the centre of contemporary debates about the relationship between the academy and practice as anthropologists attempt to engage with the consequences of climate change.
Walsh is currently working on the publication of a monograph that place the findings presented in his thesis into the public domain.
Professional Profile
Ciarán Walsh is a graduate of NCAD (1984) where he specialised in arts education. He has worked in a number of educational contexts including Triskel Arts Centre and the Arts Council. He joined The National Folk Theatre as Visual Arts Director in 1995 where he worked until June 2010. In 2008 he completed an MA by Research (HETAC) and in 2010 he established www.curator.ie as a vehicle for innovative arts, heritage and media projects.
Margaret Rishbeth, granddaughter of Alfred Cort Haddon, and Ciarán Walsh at the opening of ‘The Irish Headhunter’ in the Haddon Library, University of Cambridge.
In 2013 he developed the critically acclaimed ‘Headhunter’ project in association with Trinity College Dublin and The Great Blasket Centre, with funding from the Heritage Council of Ireland and the OPW. This led to the discovery of significant new material relating to the Irish Ethnographic Survey (1891-1903) in the Haddon Library in Cambridge and the “old” Anatomy Building in TCD.
In 2014 the Irish Research Council agreed to fund a 4 year programme of postgraduate research at Maynooth University (Anthropology) in association with TCD School of Medicine and Shanahan Research Group (Kimmage Development Studies Centre). The funding was provided by the IRC under its Employment Based Postgraduate Research Programme.
In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 2016, he was appointed as an associate of TCD School of Medicine.
In 2020, he completed all stages of an employment based PhD programme that was funded by the Irish Research Council.
He was accepted as a member of EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) and the History of Anthropology Network.
He also resumed work as a curator, working with Pat Ahern, founder of the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, on a visual ethnography of the community that developed a people’s theatre movement in North Kerry in the 1970s.
Publications
Published work includes an essay on the photography of R. J. Welch in Framing the West, Irish Academic Press, 2007, Ed. Dr. Ciara Breathnach. He published The Stuccowork of Pat McAuliffe of Listowel by Sean Lynch in 2008. The essay Níl Scoil Phéintéireachta Gaelacha Againn Fós was published in Shorelines (2010) by Memorial University Newfoundland. Irish Headhunter, The Photograph Albums of Charles R, Browne was published in May 2012. An essay on the photography of J. M. Synge was published in Céiliúradh an Bhlascaoid Mhóir 14 in 2012. Charles R. Browne. The Irish Headhunter was published in the Irish Journal of Anthropology 16, 1 (2013) and An Island Portrait (photographic editor) was published by Collins Press in May 2013.
… Pending
Walsh, Ciarán. (Forthcoming). “Anarchy in the UK: Haddon and the anarchist agenda in the Anglo-Irish folklore movement.” In Folklore and nation in Britain and Ireland edited by Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart. London: Routledge.
Conferences
2019 Folklore and the Nation. Folklore Society, University of Derby.
2020 Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues, Past, Present and Future. Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Geographical Society, the British Academy & SOAS. London, June 4-7 (deferred to 2022 due to COVID 19).
2020 EASA 2020: New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe. 16th EASA Biennial Conference, 20-24 July 2020, Lisbon (online).
2020 The Centenary of the Haddon Library, September 25-27, Cambridge University.
Personal Profile
Ciarán Walsh is married and lives near the village of Ballyheigue in the south west of Ireland. He is a mountaineer, a kayaker and an occasional cyclist.
