A report which provides an explanation of the aims and contexts of the symposium, and a list of its findings and proposed outcomes, is now available to download as a PDF file from www.irishseasymposium.com. The report also contains a selection of photographs taken at the symposium, kindly permitted by Margaret Brown, Joe Fallon, and Gerry Molloy.

You can now listen to the proceedings of the Irish Sea symposium on our podcasts page: Please click here to go to the podcasts page. Thanks to Mike Liffey (Real Smart Media) for recording and editing the podcasts, Dara Traynor for the sound for the symposium, and Professor Gerardine Meaney and Valerie Norton of the UCD Humanities Institute for sponsoring the podcasts and the symposium.

Ian Lawler (Bord Iascaigh Mhara) will be speaking at the Irish Sea symposium on Saturday 20th September about the shipwreck of the Royal Navy iron battleship, the HMS Vanguard, which lies east of Kish Bank. The underwater heritage of the Irish Sea is one of the themes the symposium aims to explore.

Jim MacLaughlin, author of Troubled Waters: A Social and Cultural History of Ireland’s Sea Fisheries, will be speaking at the Irish Sea Symposium on Saturday 20th September 2014. The title of his paper is ‘The Irish Sea and the Atlantic Seaboard in Historical Context: A Tale of Two Seas’.

Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha will be speaking at the Irish Sea symposium on 20th September 2014 about the history of revenue officers and smuggling on the Irish Sea in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century. The title of her presentation is ‘The Irish Revenue Boatmen, 1684-1765’

Professor John Mack of University of East Anglia, author of The Sea: A Cultural History, will be speaking at the Irish Sea symposium on 20th September 2014 in a presentation entitled ‘Frogs around a pond? The Irish Sea as local and as global’.

Dr Marcus Collier of the UCD School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy will speak at the Irish Sea Symposium on 20th September 2014 about the non-economic values of the marine ecosystem of the Irish Sea. How do we benefit from the Irish Sea in all those ways other than the ones we can measure in euros and cents? The title of Dr Collier’s presentation is ‘Marine Cultural Ecosystem Services’.

Dr Jan Geert Hiddink from the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University will speak at the Irish Sea symposium on 20th September 2014 about the effect of fisheries and other stressors on the sea-bed ecosystem in the Irish Sea. Dr Hiddink has extensive expertise on the effects of disturbance (such as exploitation and climate change) on sea-bed life.

Professor Andrew Gibson of Royal Holloway, University of London, will speak at the Irish Sea Symposium on 20th September 2014 about the Cumbrian poet, Norman Nicholson, and how Nicholson depicts the Irish Sea coast of North West England. The title of Professor Gibson’s presentation is ‘”Hope is a Geological Grace”: History and Geology in Norman Nicholson’s Poetry of the Cumbrian Coast’.

Cormac Lowth, author and diver, will speak at the Irish Sea Symposium on Saturday 20th September about maritime art of the pre-photographic era, and will present some of the drawings and paintings which are important historical sources for the vernacular boats and maritime practices of the past.