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An Island Funeral, Inishbofin, 16 July 2023.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on March 29, 2023 – 10:25 am
Filed under Curatorial Projects, Repatriation Projects, Stolen Skulls
The Stolen Skulls of Inishbofin. Photo, by Marie Coyne (2022) of Inishbofin Island off the coast of Galway in Ireland. The ruin of St Colman's Monastery provides a backdrop for the contemporary burial ground in the foreground. Haddon and Dixon stole thirteen crania (skulls without jaw bones) from the monastery in 1890, and gave the collection to Trinity College Dublin. Marie Coyne and Ciarán Walsh began campaigning for their return in 2012.

St Colmans’s Monastery and burial ground, Inishbofin. Photo Marie Coyne.

Inishbofin community representatives and repatriation campaigners met with Eoin O’Sullivan and Ciarán O’Neill of TCD last night (28 March 2023), and agreed in outline arrangements for the return and burial of ancestral remains held in the Haddon Dixon Collection; in accordance with island traditions and community archaeology guidelines. 

The remains will be handed over to the community at a ceremony in TCD and taken by an undertaker to Galway before being transferred by boat to the island, where they will be buried on Sunday 16 July 2023, one hundred and thirty three years to the day after they were taken. 

It seems that this will serve as a model for the return and burial of the remains taken from St Finian’s Bay and Oileán Árann.

It’s been a long and, at times, difficult process, but the motto of the cooperative movement in Ireland is ní neart go cur le chéile (with unity comes strength) and we thank all of our supporters. This would not have happened without them.

We also thank Andrew O’Connell of the Provost’s Office in TCD. His intervention was a turning point in our negotiations with TCD. We especially thank Eoin O’Sullivan and Ciarán O’Neill, who got the deal across the line. Also, thanks to Mobeen Hussain and Patrick Walsh of the colonial legacies project TCD.

Marie Coyne and Ciarán Walsh

on behalf of the

The Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project

Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum. 

Dr Pegi Vail, NYU, anthropologist, filmmaker, and community representative Inishbofin.

Cathy Galvin, poet and journalist. 

Deirdre Casey, Comhlacht Forbartha an Gleanna (St Finian’s / the Glen). 

Niamh Cotter, anthropologist, geographer, and community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.  

René Gapert, independent forensic anthropologist.

Dr Fiona Murphy, Anthropologist.

Máirtín Ó Conceanainn, community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.  

Pádraig Ó Direáin, community representative, Inis Mór, Árann. 

Pat O’Leary, Comhlacht Forbartha an Gleanna (St Finian’s / the Glen). 

Ciarán Walsh, curator and anthropologist. 

Inishbofin Community and Friends

Inishbofin Development Company

Tuuli Rantala, Community development Co-Ordinator

Tommy Burke

Ryan Lash

Pauline King

Aoife King

Every person who attended the public meeting on Inishbofin on 4 November 2022, those who signed the petition on Inishbofin and online, and made submissions to TCD on our behalf.

Eamon Ó Cuiv TD

Deaglán O’Mocháin, Dearcán Media.

Ana Ivasiuc, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures.

All the journalists who covered the story in the media.

Teampall Cholmain 2023 – 1890

A composite photograph by Ciarán  Walsh of St Colman's Monastery, showing Marie Coyne's 2014 colour recreation (left) of the photograph of A. C. Haddon's black and white original (right), recording the location of the skulls (bottom right corner) he and Dixon stole under cover of darkness on 16 July 1890. The photographs show the eastern gable of the mediaeval monastery, and in Haddon also recorded the scene in an identical sketch in his journal, and that sketch illustrates a vivid account of the theft.

A composite photograph of St Colman’s Monastery, showing Marie Coyne’s 2014 recreation (left) of the photograph of A. C. Haddon’s original (right), recording the location of the skulls (bottom right corner) he and Dixon stole under cover of darkness on 16 July 1890. Haddon also recorded the scene in an identical sketch in his journal, and that sketch illustrates a vivid account of the theft.

circle of texture grey back ground with the words www.curator.ie embossed on it. designed by Ciarán n Walsh

The Ann Doherty Collection goes on show

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 29, 2022 – 7:32 am
Filed under Archive Projects, Curatorial Projects, Photography

The Ann Doherty Collection is an archive of photographic material, typescripts, and print journalism generated by Ann Doherty while working as a social-documentary photographer and photojournalist between 1997 and 2005. Donegal County Council Archives Service acquired her collection in 2018 and, with the assistance of the Heritage Council, employed Ciarán | curator.ie to catalogue the entire collection and digitise 100 images for exhibition in the County Museum. “A Common Humanity: Full Circle” opened in Letterkenny on September 22, 2022 in preparation for Culture Night.

“Head-hunting” in TCD: negotiations begin on the repatriation of the Haddon Dixon Collection.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 6, 2022 – 9:31 am
Filed under Curatorial Projects, Public Engagement
Group photograph showing PatO'Leary, St Finian's Bay, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail, anthropologist at NYU, Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie, the main square in Trinity College Dublin ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle to negotiate the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and held in the "Old" Anatomy Museum in the University.

The Haddon Dixon Repatriation delegation gathers in TCD ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle and her colonial legacies team. L-R: Pat O’Leary, St Finian’s Bay community representative, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail anthropologist and film maker at New York University, and Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie.

A delegation from the Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project (above) met with Provost Linda Doyle’s colonial legacy team to begin negotiations on the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and currently held in the “Old” Anatomy Museum in the University.

Pat O’Leary opened the meeting by presenting the community perspective on the repatriation claim. Cathy Galvin read a statement on behalf on Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum, who initiated the claim in 2012. A large contingent of community representatives attended via zoom. Eoin O’Sullivan, Senior Dean in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, and Ciarán O’Neill, Ussher Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century History, responded and the discussion that followed marked the commencement of a public engagement process that will inform a decision on the repatriation claim, which is expected in December 2022.

Photograph showing a sign that reads "Inishbofin, Haddon & Dixon." Visible in the background are a series of skull wrapped in plastic and stored on shelves in a glass-fronted cabinet, one of the display cases in the "Old " Anatomy Museum in Trinity College Dublin.

BREXIT, anarchy and folklore collection in Ireland

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 20, 2021 – 3:17 pm
Filed under Curatorial Projects, Research

Routledge Taylor Francis has just published Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland, edited by Carina Hart and Matthew Cheeseman. It’s a multidisciplinary study of the idea of folklore and its relationship to the idea of nationhood, especially in the form of nationalist ideologies. The project developed out a lively conference organised by the Folklore Society and Derby University to coincide with the planned departure of Britain from the EU in March 2019.

Ciarán Walsh takes David Michôd’s 2019 reworking of Sheakespeare’s Henry V as an example of the mobilisation of an imagined nation at a time of crisis and links this idea to the emergence of the English-England movement that led to BREXIT. This becomes the starting point for a radically new look at the the history of folklore collection in Ireland in the 1890s, when Irish nationalists and their anti-imperial allies intensified their efforts to break the union between Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Top: Clara Patterson, 1893, Children playing “Green Gravel” in Ballymiscaw, Co Down, Ireland (© Ulster Folk and Transport Museum).

Bottom Haddon, 1898, A still form the dance of the Malu Zogo-Le on the island of Mer, Torres Strait (© National Film and Sound Archive of Australia).

Walsh revisits Haddon’s attempt to mobilise an anti-colonial, Anglo-Irish folklore movement in the 1890s as part of a ‘savage-lives-matter’ campaign that was influenced by utopian, anarchist, and anti-colonial ideas. The centre piece of this argument is Haddon’s photographic collaboration with Clara Patterson, which was part of a wider investigation of dance as a marker of the essential unity of humankind.

Walsh proposes that Haddon’s film represents a singular modernist achievement in the history of folklore/anthropology and wonders why the folklore movement he started – with its commitment to racial and gender equality – has long been eclipsed by Douglas Hyde and his followers who prioritised collection and restoration over critique and revolution?

5 years, 68 days, 6 hours, 31 minutes, & some seconds …

Comments Off on 5 years, 68 days, 6 hours, 31 minutes, & some seconds …
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on June 12, 2020 – 10:45 am
Filed under Curatorial Projects

I walked into the Anthropology Dept in Maynooth University at 9am on February 2, 2015 to begin a PhD and at 4.31pm yesterday afternoon Mark, the postman, delivered a letter confirming that I had been awarded the Doctoral Degree by the Academic Council of the University.

Many thanks to my wife and partner-in-PhD Nuala Finn.

To Dáithí De Mórdha who started the ball rolling in 2010, Aidan Baker and John D. Pickles who opened the archives in Cambridge to me in 2013, and the team in Maynooth who kept this project on the road and moving forward: Mark Maguire, Andrea Valova, Hana Červinková, David Prendergast, Denise Erdman, Jacqui Mullaly, and Conor Wilkinson. Thanks also to my partners in this project: Siobhán Ward and Martina Hennessy, the guardians of the skull-measuring lab in TCD, and my enterprise mentor and academic guide Rob Kevlihan.

There are many more people who made this PhD happen and a full set of acknowledgements can be read here.

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    • An Island Funeral, Inishbofin, 16 July 2023.
    • TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin
    • Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.
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Latest News



An Island Funeral, Inishbofin, 16 July 2023.



TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin



Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



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