Robert Savage, whose research, teaching, and administrative leadership has bolstered Boston College’s renowned Irish Studies Program for more than two decades, has been named interim director of the program. A faculty member in the History Department, Savage served as the program’s associate director from 1995-2003, and co-director from 2003-2010 with Associate Professor of English Marjorie Howes.
Established in 1978, the BC Irish Studies Program is acknowledged as an international leader in the field. Headquartered in Connolly House on Hammond Street, the program explores the history, literature, music, and art of Ireland through undergraduate and graduate study, faculty research, scholarly conferences, publications, lectures, concerts, and other events such as film screenings and dance performance. Irish Studies also has developed fruitful partnerships with the University’s John J. Burns Library, with its outstanding collection of Irish books and manuscripts, and the McMullen Museum of Art, with which the program has collaborated on numerous exhibitions.
Holding a bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Boston College, Savage sees an opportunity for Irish Studies to expand its partnerships and collaborations within the University, as well as beyond:
I would like to see Irish Studies engage with other departments and programs at BC. Many common areas of interest between Irish Studies and other programs could provide the basis for interdisciplinary teaching, research, and other activities, including issues of diaspora, justice, inequality, and borders. I’m eager, as are my colleagues in Irish Studies, to work with faculty and students across the University. In particular, we seek to improve and update our outreach to undergraduate students, our core constituents. We also look forward to continuing our long, successful associations with Burns Library and the McMullen Museum, and to affirming relationships with our many friends and supporters in the U.S., Ireland, and elsewhere.
Savage’s research on Irish political, social, and cultural history focuses on Anglo-Irish relations, “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and the history of film and the broadcast media in Ireland and Britain. He has published five books, including The BBC’s Irish Troubles (short-listed for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Award); A Loss of Innocence? Television and Irish Society 1960-1972 (winner of the 2010 James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Best Book in History and Social Sciences); Sean Lemass: A Biography; Irish Television: the Political and Social Origins; and Ireland in the New Century, Politics, Identity and Culture for which he was editor and a contributing author. He is working on a new book about Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 decision to institute restrictions on broadcasting, in response to coverage of British policies in Northern Ireland.
Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Dean Gregory Kalscheur, S.J. looks forward to working with Rob Savage:
His years of experience with the Irish Studies Program as associate director and co-director, his gifts as an innovative and collaborative teacher, and his outstanding record as a scholar of the social and cultural history of modern Ireland all make him well suited to continuing the work of strengthening Irish Studies as a dynamic interdisciplinary program at the heart of intellectual life at Boston College. I am grateful to Rob for taking on this role as we look toward the new academic year that lies ahead.