Sep
09
10:30
Enduring Power of Attorney & Assisted Decision Making
Áine Flynn
- 📅Tuesday, September 9, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 11:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
The focus of this session will be on the importance of making enduring powers of attorney and advance healthcare directives.
Áine Flynn is a solicitor and former senior partner in Dublin firm KOD Lyons, specialising in public interest law. She has been a member of the Human Rights Committee of the Law Society since 2012 and is a previous member of the Law Society Mental Health and Capacity Task Force. In October 2017 she was appointed inaugural Director of the Decision Support Service under the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015.
Sep
23
10:30
Who were the Huguenots?
Ruth Whelan
- 📅Tuesday, September 23, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 11:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Ruth was Chair of French at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where she worked from 1997 to 2022. She is the author of over one hundred publications, including books, journal articles, book chapters and encyclopaedia entries on the religious, political, intellectual and literary culture of the Huguenots during the Second Refuge, between 1680 and 1730. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and the University of Paris; she was appointed lecturer and later senior lecturer in French at Trinity College Dublin (1984-1997). She was an invited visiting professor at several continental European Universities, most recently at the University of Geneva. Her book Le voyage extraordinaire d’Élie Neau: du forçat pour la foi au catéchiste des esclaves (The extraordinary voyage of Élie Neau: from Protestant galley slave to catechist of slaves) was published this year by Champion in Paris.
Oct
07
10:30
Glasnevin Cemetery: Memories, Monuments and Memorials
Michael Hall
- 📅Tuesday, October 7, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 11:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Glasnevin Cemetery will be two hundred years old in 2032 and has over 1.3 million interments, nearly as many as the living population of Dublin today. As Ireland’s national cemetery, its story mirrors the history of its time. This talk, which will include elements of a personal memoir, will treat of the cemetery’s establishment and evolution and reference some of its most notable interments and monuments.
Michael Hall is a retired Technological University of Dublin lecturer, a published historian, and has a personal connection with the cemetery, having been reared within its walls in a lodge where generations of his family lived and worked as Head Gardiners to the Dublin Cemeteries Committee.
Nov
03
10:30
Zeno of Verona and the first Christian horoscope
Mike Norris
- 📅Monday, November 3, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 11:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Mike Norris studied physics at UCD in the 1960’s. He worked in several occupations before becoming chief technical officer at HEAnet, Ireland’s academic and research network. He also served on the boards of INEX (Dublin) and RIPE NCC (Amsterdam).
On retirement, he studied Classics at UCD, TCD, and the University of Verona. He had papers published in Italy and Greece. He completed his doctorate at UCD in 2023.
In 425, exactly 1700 years ago, a council of bishops met in Nicaea. Strongly encouraged by the emperor Constantine, they came up with a brief formula of words, the Nicene Creed. Those baptised as Christians would recite the Creed as a statement of their new belief system. Zeno was an early adopter of this Creed. As bishop of Verona, he instructed many converts on its meaning. He realised, though, that he was up against centuries of pagan tradition and practice. This included astrology which, with its emblematic zodiac and its claims to predict the future, ran counter to Christian beliefs. Zeno’s sermons include the earliest Christian homily on the signs of the zodiac. Rather than condemning the cult outright, he gave a Christian version of the signs in that sermon. In doing so, he undermined the zodiacal tradition and hinted at a Christian replacement, still practiced in some countries today. The sermon shows the bishop’s knowledge of his subject, his understanding of the Veronese people, and the subtle way in which he maintains a fine balance between Church and state.
Nov
18
10:30
Simple strategies to protect the ageing brain from dementia.
Marina Annetta Lynch
- 📅Tuesday, November 18, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 11:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Marina will talk about factors that contribute to dementia, and especially Alzheimer’s disease These can be classified as modifiable and non-modifiable risks. The talk will concentrate on the modifiable risks, explain why they are risks, describe how the risks can be mitigated and how the mitigation works
Marina Lynch Is Fellow Emeritus in the School of Medicine (Physiology), Trinity College Dublin. She held a lectureship in Trinity and, since 2006, a Personal Chair in Cellular Neuroscience. She was Director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience 2006 and 2009 and is currently Chair of the Board of the Institute. She was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in May 2009.
Her research, mainly preclinical, focussed on determining the changes that occur in the brain with age, especially those that contributed to the pathology that characterises Alzheimer’s disease. Most recent work concerned the sex-related differences in Alzheimer’s disease.