A Report by Val Noone
Newman College, Melbourne and Nicholas O’Donnell with his wife, Molly
In January 2026, Melbourne will host two outstanding scholars of Irish Studies, Louis de Paor and Brian Ó Conchubhair. Both are leading experts in the history of the Irish language and its contemporary use.
De Paor is the director of the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway, Ireland. Ó Conchubhair is professor of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame, USA. They have been awarded the highly regarded Nicholas O’Donnell Fellowship. The fellowship is hosted jointly by Newman, St Mary’s College and the Higgins Chair of Irish Studies of Melbourne University.
Kathy Kilmartin, director of the Allan & Maria Myers Academic Centre, St Marys College & Newman College, explained that normally one fellowship is offered each year. This time, when the committee was hesitating about choosing between the two, Newman and St Mary’s Colleges came forward with the generous offer of hosting both, she said: The O’Donnell Fellowship commemorates the donation in 1924 to NewmanCollege of the personal library of Melbourne-based doctor and Irish scholar, Nicholas Michael O’Donnell (1862-1920) by his family. It contains rare books, pamphlets andmanuscripts, many in the Irish language.
Uncollected writings of Pádraig Pearse
Louis De Paor, who lived in Melbourne for a decade before returning to Ireland in 1996, will be known to older readers because of his role around the city as a poet and community activist. In 1995 he was part of the circle who founded Cumann Gaeilge na hAstráile, the Irish Language Association of Australia.
At present, he is nearing completion of his bilingual volume of uncollected writings by Pádraig Pearse, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. To date Pearse’s substantial body of writings on literature, folklore, theatre, art, and culture have not been widely available. De Paor has trawled through all the relevant issues of An Claidheamh Soluis, (Sword of Light), the newspaper of the Conradh na
Gaeilge, the Irish Language Association.
He has brought to light the emerging patterns of Pearse’s thinking as he grappled with the tensions between old and new, tradition and modernity, text and performance, oral and written literature, between Irish and European, native and non-native models of art, literature, theatre, imagination and artistic identity.
While in Melbourne, de Paor plans to explore further the links between Ireland and Australia at the height of the language revival movement. He said: ‘I have noted references in An Claidheamh Soluis to Australia and to occasional visitors from Australia to Ireland. There are also tantalising references to individuals such as PJ Dillon (Brisbane), Fr Dooley SJ (Sydney), John Nestor (Adelaide) and Irish Australian contralto Miss Eva O’Connor/Eibhlín Ní Chonchubhair.’ He is seeking further information about them.
From O’Donnell to contemporary authors
Ó Conchubhair is well known for his ground-breaking study of the influence of European fin de siècle intellectual life, particularly Darwinism, on the Gaelic Revival. This year he has published a new biography of Flann O’Brien/Miles na gCopaleen.
He is coming to Melbourne to complete one project and start a new one. The first is to investigate the books in Nicholas O’Donnell’s library, in order to complete an academic essay on the Irish language in Australia. He will focus on the cultural and linguistic revival of the late 1800s and the early 1900s, in which O’Donnell was a key figure.
His second project concerns the contemporary Irish-language movement in Australia. He was one of the first to write about the poetry of Louis de Paor. He has edited a special issue of Éire-Ireland magazine which has a study of Colin Ryan’s short stories. Moreover, his 2023 bilingual anthology of Irish poetry from medieval to modern, entitled Bone and Marrow/ Cnámh agus Smior, contains works by Ryan and
Julie Breathnach-Banwait, whose poems will be familiar to Tinteán readers. The fellowship will enable him to link up better with Australian Irish-language writers.
De Paor and Ó Conchubhair will give public presentations at times to be announced. As the O’Donnell Fellowship moves into its sixteenth year, their appointment promises to fulfill its aims of promoting the Nicholas O’Donnell library to a research audience, and enhancing the Newman-St Mary’s Academic Centre’s role as a community of scholars.
Val Noone
Val Noone is a fellow in Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne and co-editor of Gaeilge Ghriandóite A go Z a hAon. In 2013 the National University of Ireland awarded him the degree Doctor of Literature for his contribution to Irish Studies in Australia. He can be contacted at <valnoone@iinet.net.au>.
Tinteán 