Declan Kiberd, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English and Irish Language and Literature, will give this tribute to Christopher Fox, who co-founded the Institute in 1992 with Seamus Deane and has served as its director since 2001. Professor Fox will step down from the directorship at the end of the Fall 2017 semester.
Professor Kiberd says: "In the past three decades Chris Fox has done more than any other scholar-professor to deepen and enrich Ireland's understanding of itself and of its place in the wider world. He has, in his work on Jonathan Swift and in leadership of the Institute, challenged us all to reimagine our disciplines. His combination of intellectual acuity and instinctual empathy enabled dozens of projects which have utterly altered our imaginative landscapes. He has inspired every worker in the field to recognise that Irish Studies is a truly global enterprise and at the same time a search for a home we may never have fully known."
Reception following.
A note on the image: Painting by James Dixon (1887-1970), "West End Village, Tory Island"