The RSAI runs an annual programme of lectures, talks, outings and excursions to which Members and Guests are invited to partake. Places on all outings and excursions must be booked in advance but lectures and talks are open to all. Lectures and talks usually take place at 7.30pm in the Helen Roe theatre, which is in the basement of Society House, 63 Merrion Square, unless otherwise indicated.
Currently, due to the Covid-19 restrictions, our talks and lectures will take place online via ZOOM webinars, until further notice.
The subjects of lectures and talks span all areas of the Society’s remit, history, archaeology, art history, local and social history. Excursions include day-trips and three/four day expert led tours.
If you have any suggestions for potential lectures or talks please forward this information to the Hon. General Secretary Ms. Philippa E. Barry here for consideration by the Programme sub-committee.
Here are the details of upcoming events on the 2020 programme:
LECTURES
23 January 2020
Rags, riches and recycling: material and visual culture of the Dublin Society 1731-1781
Dr Claudia Kinmonth, RIA
20 February 2020
Archaeological excavations at South Main Street, Cork: Hiberno-Norse to Beamish brewery
Dr Maurice F. Hurley, Archaeologist
CANCELLED: 26 March 2020
The annual Próinséas Ní Chatháin Lecture
Cnuasaigh de laoithe fiannaíochta i lámhscríbhinní iarchlasaiceacha na Gaeilge
Dr Síle Ní Mhurchú, UCC
CANCELLED: 23 April 2020
Saluting Ireland’s Antarctic explorers
Mr Michael Smith. author, polar historian & journalist
CANCELLED: 21 May 2020 Annual Helen Roe Lecture
Early Irish sculpture and the art of the high crosses
Prof. Roger Stalley, Fellow Emeritus, TCD
24 September 2020 – CANCELLED
Remembering Henry Joy
Prof. Jim Smyth, University of Notre Dame
22 October 2020 Annual Frank Mitchell Lecture – online via Zoom webinar; to register a place please contact the office
Forty years on: ‘The Irish Landscape’ revisited
Dr John Feehan, UCD
26 November 2020 – online via Zoom webinar; to register a place please contact the office
Social life in Pre-Reformation Dublin, 1450–1540
Dr Peadar Slattery, Historian, RSAI Member
10 December 2020 – Presidential lecture, online via Zoom webinar; to register a place please contact the office
Water closets and wig rooms: selling home comforts in late Georgian Dublin
Dr Conor Lucey, UCD
TALKS
3 February 2020
The nineteenth-century suburbs of Monkstown and Glasthule; the impact of estate management on their design and formation
Dr Laura Johnstone, UCD
2 March 2020
Embodying the past: commemorating history through the arts
Dr Kelly Fitzgerald (RSAI), Ms Valerie Connor (Curator), Ms Louise Lowe (ANU Productions), Dr Brenda Malone (NMI)
CANCELLED: 6 April 2020
Crafting connections: domestic building in Dublin in the eighteenth century
Dr Melanie Hayes, Irish Research Council Laureate Project Fellow, CRAFTVALUE
CANCELLED: 11 May 2020
Grandeur and Decline: Henrietta Street and the making of Dublin’s Tenements 1800-1900
Dr Timothy Murtagh, TCD
7 September 2020- online via Zoom webinar; to register a place please contact the office
Panel discussion on National Monument Acts
with Ms Maeve Sikora (NMI), Mr Michael MacDonagh (Chief Archaeologist, NMS), Mr Sean Kirwan (NMS), Ms Philippa Barry (Archaeologist, RSAI Joint Honorary General Secretary). Chaired by Mr Ian Doyle, Head of Conservation, The Heritage Council.
5 October 2020 – online via Zoom webinar; to register a place please contact the office
From molecules to monuments: seeking the passage tomb people
Dr Jessica Smyth, UCD
2 November 2020 – online via Zoom webinar; to register a place please contact the office
The lost Church of St Peter and the “Duiblinn”
Mr Paul Duffy, IAC Archaeology