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This archival blog features a number of poems by President Michael D. Higgins.

In this 1948 article, Richard Hayes explores Ireland’s historic links with Santiago de Compostela through pilgrimage, trade, education, religion and political connections.

In this 2018 article, Celia G. Kenny explores poetry as protest, focusing on Tuvia Ruebner’s challenge to injustice, nationalism and the Israeli occupation through his poetry.

J.M. Murphy examines Athens’ imperial ambitions, arguing that its reliance on power, centralisation and oppression ultimately weakened its empire, while its cultural legacy endured.

Lambert McKenna presents two lively Irish bardic poems: one celebrates poetic mastery, while the other humorously attacks a boastful rival and his flawed verse.

In this article from 2015 Dr Catherine Lawless looks at the cult of St Anne (mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Christ), her role in the establishment of the Immaculate Conception as dogma, and the iconography and visual language used in representations of St Anne in her patronal roles.

In this article from 2002, which feels stiflingly, upsettingly pertinent to the Ireland of 2025, author Bryan Fanning addresses the ‘usefulness’ of racism in politicss and the re-codification of racism from being overtly race-based in public discourse to that of ‘cultural differences’. Modern readers may note that “Clumsy or even unwitting expressions of racism and […]

In 1922, Herbert Thurston challenged Margaret Murray’s witch-cult theory, arguing that witch-trial confessions were often coerced by torture and shaped by superstition, fear, and hysteria.