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.