'1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising' looks closely at how the Irish government reinvented the message of Easter 1916 through the official golden jubilee celebrations of the nationalist Rising. This collection of essays explores the organization of various unofficial commemorations in Northern Ireland in 1966 and the significance of these for nationalist and unionist politics in the mid-1960s. It analyzes the golden jubilee of the Rising from a political perspective, and revisits the 1966 anniversary from the perspectives of drama, performance, youth culture and history.
Contributors to the book are the editors, Mary E. Daly and Margaret O'Callaghan, and: Diarmaid Ferriter, Rebecca Graff-McRae, Roisin Higgins, Carole Holohan, Michael Laffan, Catherine O'Donnell and Anthony Roche.
Mary E. Daly was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1991 and in 2014 made history by becoming the first female president in the 230 year history of the Academy. Professor Daly is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Dublin (UCD) and served for seven years as Principal of UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies; she has also held visiting positions at Harvard and Boston College. From 2000 to 2004 she was Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy and vice-chair of the Academy's Working Group on Higher Education. Over the course of her distinguished career, Professor Daly has researched widely and published prolifically, notably: Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 1860-1914 (1984); Women and Work in Ireland (1997); The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973 (2006); and, with Theo Hoppen, Gladstone: Ireland and Beyond (2011). She has edited the Royal Irish Academy publications 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising (2007) and Roger Casement in Irish and World History (2005).
Margaret O'Callaghan is a Senior Lecturer in Politics in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast. She has co-edited 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising (2007).
