Jan
21
10:30
Noisy Neighbours - the ecology of urban gulls.
Adam Kane
- 📅Tuesday, January 21, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 12:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Human-wildlife conflict in urban environments highlights the intractable tension between our desire for a sheltered life and our commitment to animal conservation. The case of roof-nesting gulls epitomizes this tension in some of the most prosperous cities on Earth, including Dublin. I will discuss the causes, consequences and possible resolutions of this conflict by drawing on my research group’s findings where we have investigated the social and animal dimensions of the issue.
Adam Kane is an ecologist at the School of Biology and Environmental Science at UCD. His research focuses on media portrayals of human-wildlife conflict, animal movement ecology and science communication.
Feb
18
10:30
How studying bats can show us how to slow down ageing and live forever young!
Emma Teeling
- 📅Tuesday, February 18, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 12:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Emma Teeling is the Full Professor of Zoology at University College Dublin (UCD), She graduated from University College Dublin with a BSc in Zoology, then obtained an MSc in Animal Behavior from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, studying the captive behavior of the endangered swift fox in Canada. Her PhD was awarded from Queen’s University Belfast, during which she spent two years at the University of California Riverside, USA working with Mark Springer reconstructing the evolutionary relationships of bats by generating the first large molecular phylogenies. She continued this research during her postdoc at the National Institutes of Health, Maryland USA under the supervision of Stephen O’Brien until returned to Ireland to start her faculty position at UCD, integrating cutting-edge molecular technology with field-based ecology and behavioural studies to develop bats as unique model study species.
For the past twelve years she has pioneered the study of wild bats as new models of extended mammalian healthspan uniting field, molecular, cellular and genomic studies to uncover how bats slow down expected ageing and resist disease, collaborating with researchers throughout the globe. She has been awarded prestigious personal grants for her research including a President of Ireland Young Researcher Award; an Irish Research Council (IRC) Laureate Award; European Research Council (ERC) Starting grant, ERC Synergy Grant. She has been awarded Chevalier des Palmes Académiques, by the French Government; the Murray Lectureship from University of Sydney; the Miller Award by the North American Bat Research Society, and Commended Irish Research Council Researcher of the Year Award (2023), for her research. She is an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy and has given countless high-profile public presentations throughout the globe (e.g. World Economic Forum, TED, European Parliament and European Commission) highlighting her findings.
Apr
01
10:30
Voices of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown: Women in Domestic Service and veterans of the Great War.
Deirdre Nuttall
- 📅Tuesday, April 1, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 12:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Deirdre Nuttall is an ethnologist, researcher, and writer specialising in narrative and oral history. She will tell us about the oral histories of some of the less heard-voices of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown.
Apr
15
10:30
Dr.Kathleen Lynn, Doctor, Patriot, Woman of Substance.
Paddy Brock
- 📅Tuesday, April 15, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 12:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
The talk will cover Kathleen Lynn’s journey from her birth in Killala , her education in Germany and Ireland, her qualification as a Doctor, her emergence as a major participant in the 1916 rising ,her involvement in the Politics of period 1900 to 1950 ,and her major achievement in the founding of St Ultan’s Hospital.
Paddy Brock spent 40 years working in Prosthetics in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, He is now retired for 20 years and has an interest in Irish History particularly in some of the lesser celebrated participants.
May
13
10:30
Electoral Systems and their Consequences
David Farrell
- 📅Tuesday, May 13, 2025
- 🕥10:30 - 12:30
- 🏟Newtownpark Pastoral Centre (map)
Electoral systems — the mechanisms that determine how our politicians are elected into office — come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. (A little known fact, for example, is that Ireland’s Single Transferable Vote system is hardly used by any other country.) This presentation uses data from the most recent edition of my book on this topic, to review the different types of electoral systems in use across more than 75 of the world’s democracies, examining the main ways in which electoral systems can vary, and what consequences this can have for a country’s political system.
Professor Farrell MRIA, holds the Chair of Political Science at University College Dublin. A specialist in the study of representation, electoral systems and parties, his recent books include: Electoral Systems: A Global Perspective (Bloomsbury, 2024), The Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics (Oxford University Press, 2021), and Deliberative Mini-Publics: Core Design Features (Bristol University Press, 2021). Other books include the award-winning Political Parties and Democratic Linkage: How Parties Organize Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2011). Much of his current work is focused on deliberative mini-publics (DMPs), including advice to a number of government-led DMP processes in Ireland, UK, Belgium, as well as supporting the work of one of the EU-wide citizens’ panels during the 2020-21 Conference on the Future of Europe. From 2021-24, he was Chair of Europe’s largest political science association, the European Consortium for Political Research.