TCD Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies Hosts Lecture by Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament

Posted on: 17 October 2006

Trinity College’s Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies (CISS) co-hosted a lecture by the Rt. Hon. George Reid, MSP, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament  on October 17 last in the Royal Irish Academy.  The lecture formed part of the Presiding Officer’s four-day visit to Ireland, with an all-party delegation from the Scottish Parliament, at the invitation of the Ceann Comhairle, Dr Rory O’Hanlon, TD. In his lecture, ‘Celtic Connections: Scottish-Irish Links and Twenty-First Century Democracy’, the Presiding Officer discussed the new democracy in Scotland following the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, and links between Scotland and Ireland.

The Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies (CISS) has been a major focus for the study of links between the histories, languages, and literatures of Ireland and Scotland, both through wide-ranging Higher Education Authority-funded academic research projects, and through the holding of conferences designed to bring this work to the attention of a wide public in both Ireland and Scotland. The  CISS has strong links with the AHRC Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, formally opened by President Mary McAleese, and with the universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde, as well as with Queen’s University Belfast.

Commenting on the Scottish Presiding Officer’s lecturer, TCD Professor and co-founder of  CISS,   Professor Ian Campbell Ross stated: “As we approach the 300th anniversary of the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland, the Presiding Officer’s lecture, ‘Celtic Connections’, considering the links between Scotland and Ireland in the twenty-first century, is particularly timely.”