CARTLANN

This proposal between NUIG and UU will investigate and analyse the campaigning work of Ireland’s cross-border Irish language voluntary body Conradh na Gaeilge, which is in operation since 1893 and continues to function to this day. Drawing on extensive archival records on both sides of the border, it will focus on the centrality of the media to Conradh na Gaeilge’s work, both as a platform for disseminating information and as a recurring campaign aim. To this end, the proposal will examine the use of mainstream media by Conradh na Gaeilge, the development of its own broadcast and print media and its involvement in campaigns for local and national media in Irish. Since its inception, Conradh na Gaeilge has appreciated the importance of the media, evidenced by its involvement with late 19th and early 20th Century newspapers in Irish, its sustained campaigns for Irish language radio and television and its use of social media today. Its campaigns have been mediatised from the outset and have engaged with a wide range of media outlets in Irish and English. Conradh na Gaeilge’s development over the past century straddles tradition and modernity: an organisation championing Ireland’s ancestral language and culture but making use of each technological advance in broadcasting and digital media to promote its campaigns and disseminate its philosophy among the wider public. Through exchanges of the team between both institutions, this project will deepen all-Ireland collaboration on Irish language research by both senior and early-stage researchers. Through scholarly and public engagement, it will promote lay and academic engagement with the archives, leading to greater understanding of the history of cross-border activism for the Irish language. The project will produce academic and lay outputs in order to reach the broadest audience possible. The project dovetails with the open data made available by the part-digitisation of the archive by NUI Galway, thereby ensuring maximum public accessibility to the records.