Faculty Fellow Declan Kiberd, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies, Professor of English and Irish Language and Literature, will travel to Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with a Notre Dame faculty delegation in mid-March to receive an honorary degree from Babeş-Bolyai University.
Academic events on March 16th surrounding the conferral of Professor Kiberd’s degree will comprise the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies’ inaugural Keough Global Seminar.
In extending the invitation, Professor Ioan-Aurel Pop, Rector of the University, and Professor Ioan Chirilă, President of the University Senate, recognized Professor Kiberd’s outstanding contribution to Irish Studies as well as his assistance in establishing Irish Studies at their university 15 years ago.
The Doctor Honoris Causa degree is the highest academic title of Babeş-Bolyai University. Previous recipients include Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later, Pope Benedict XVI); Mary McAleese (former President of Ireland); Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany); and Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian author who received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature).
Notre Dame’s faculty delegation includes two additional Keough-Naughton Institute faculty fellows:
- Mary O’Callaghan, Assistant Teaching Professor of Irish Language and Literature
- Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Professor of Irish Language and Literature, Concurrent Professor of Anthropology
The fellows will give talks and presentations in an Irish Studies/Irish Literature workshop in conjunction with the conferral. They will also be guests of the University during a tour of the University and the surrounding area of Transylvania.
Professor Kiberd's address, on the Irish Revival, will be the central event of the Seminar.