Anniversary Essays Forty Years of Geography at Maynooth
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Anniversary Essays Forty Years of Geography at Maynooth Table of Contents Book 1:Layout 1 8/28/12 11:10 AM Page 1 Table of Contents Page FOREWORD ...................................................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................. vii INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1 ESTATE RECORDS AND THE MAKING OF THE IRISH LANDSCAPE: AN EXAMPLE FROM COUNTY TIPPERARY - William J. Smyth ............................................... 5 CHAPTER 2 DEPENDENCE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF MINERAL RESOURCES AND THE IRISH REPUBLIC - Colm Regan and Francis Walsh .................................................. 28 CHAPTER 3 INVERSION PERSISTENCE AT LONG KESH, NORTHERN IRELAND John C. Sweeney .............................................................................................................................. 48 CHAPTER 4 THE TERRITORIAL ORGANISATION OF GAELIC LANDOWNERSHIP AND ITS TRANSFORMATION IN COUNTY MONAGHAN, 1591-1640 Patrick J. Duffy ................................................................................................................................ 57 CHAPTER 5 MORTALITY, CAUSE OF DEATH AND SOCIAL CLASS IN THE BELFAST URBAN AREA, 1970 - Dennis G. Pringle .................................................................................... 84 CHAPTER 6 THE CHANGING SYNOPTIC ORIGINS OF IRISH PRECIPITATION John C. Sweeney .............................................................................................................................. 97 CHAPTER 7 STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL PROBLEMS OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CO-OPERAT IVES IN THE IRISH GAELTACHT - Proinnsias Breathnach .............................. 116 CHAPTER 8 THE EVOLUTION OF ESTATE PROPERTIES IN SOUTH ULSTER 1600-1900 Patrick J. Duffy .............................................................................................................................. 131 CHAPTER 9 FLAX CULTIVATION IN IRELAND: THE DEVELOPMENT AND DEMISE OF A REGIONAL STAPLE - W.J. Smyth .............................................................................................. 158 CHAPTER 10 ADOPTION AND DIFFUSION PROCESSES IN THE MECHANISATION OF IRISH AGRICULTURE - James A. Walsh ................................................................................... 179 Table of Contents Book 1:Layout 1 8/28/12 11:10 AM Page 2 Table of Contents (cont.) Page CHAPTER 11 WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT AND PERIPHERALISATION: THE CASE OF IRELAND’S BRANCH PLANT ECONOMY - Proinnsias Breathnach ........................................................... 211 CHAPTER 12 HYPOTHESIZED FOETAL AND EARLY LIFE INFLUENCES ON ADULT HEART DISEASE MORTALITY: AN ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DATA FOR THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND - Dennis G. Pringle...................................................................................................... 228 CHAPTER 13 CHANGING LIFE IN THE TOWNS OF NORTH KILDARE Shelagh B. Waddington ................................................................................................................. 251 CHAPTER 14 GEOGRAPHY OF PRODUCTION LINKAGES IN THE IRISH AND SCOTTISH MICROCOMPUTER INDUSTRY: THE ROLE OF LOGISTICS Chris Van Egeraat and David Jacobson ........................................................................................ 270 CHAPTER 15 CODE AND THE TRANSDUCTION OF SPACE - Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin .................. 299 CHAPTER 16 'YOU'RE NOT A MAN AT ALL!': MASCULINITY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND STAYING ON THE LAND IN CONTEMPORARY IRELAND - Caitríona Ní Laoire ...................................... 333 CHAPTER 17 GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE SITE OF THE FORMER MONASTIC SETTLEMENT, CLONARD, COUNTY MEATH, IRELAND Paul J. Gibson and Dorothy M. George ........................................................................................ 356 CHAPTER 18 COLONIAL SPACES AND SITES OF RESISTANCE: LANDED ESTATES IN 19TH CENTURY IRELAND - Patrick J. Duffy .......................................................................... 369 CHAPTER 19 ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON WATER SUPPLYAND FLOOD HAZARD IN IRELAND USING STATISTICAL DOWNSCALING AND HYDROLOGICAL MODELLING TECHNIQUE Rosemary Charlton, Rowan Fealy, Sonja Moore, John Sweeney and Conor Murphy ................ 400 CHAPTER 20 IRISH INFORMATION SOCIETY POLICY - Conor McCaffery .............................................. 419 FOREWORD The following collection of essays celebrates the Department of Geography’s 40th Anniversary. My hope is that this short foreword will help set the scene for readers unfamiliar with the department. Geography in Maynooth is unique in being the only university department in Ireland established de novo in the past forty years. Its base was St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, a national seminary for the education of priests. St. Patrick’s had been a Recognised College of the National University of Ireland (NUI) from 1910 and opened to lay students for the HDip in Education in 1966-7 and for BA courses in 1969. The first significant expansion began in 1971 with the appointment of eleven new junior lecturers, including Patrick Duffy in Geography; nearly half of the appointees were religious. The President of the College was Monsignor Jeremiah Newman, a rural sociologist with a particular fondness for rural social geography. During academic year 1971-72, Duffy took the initial steps in the establishment of Geography, with moral support from Professor Tom Jones Hughes, and lots of practical assistance from Dr Anngret Simms, of University College Dublin (UCD). A number of guest lecturers were invited to supplement the limited scope of the First Year programme, among them Francis Walsh who was completing a Master’s degree in Simon Fraser University in Canada and Seamus Smyth who was a graduate student in the University of Toronto. Fran Walsh (aka Proinnsias Breathnach from May 1981) was appointed Junior Lecturer in 1972. Further growth occurred in 1973 with the appointment of W.J. [Willie] Smyth as Senior Lecturer and Head of Department. Smyth had also come from UCD (he was its first PhD Geography graduate) and brought with him experience of teaching in Syracuse and California. His contribution to the development of the department was seminal. He established strategic links with the political movers and shakers in the academic community of Maynooth. ‘Not only did he pioneer innovations in the teaching programme, but he also vigorously expanded the departmental facilities on the campus … probably his greatest achievement in Maynooth was the creation of a team spirit in the working of the department.’i He left Maynooth to take up an appointment as Professor of Geography in University College Cork in 1977. The department’s establishment was therefore largely undertaken by Irish geographers, products of the first generation of geographers to emerge from the largely British-originated schools in University College Dublin (UCD) and Trinity College Dublin. Indeed, looking back now, the early 1970s were sort of a ‘golden age’ for geography in Ireland with a surge of appointments of young Irish geographers to existing departments in UCD, Trinity, University College Cork and University College Galway. i By the early 1980s, the department had grown in size under the guidance of W.J. (Seamus) Smyth, who succeeded Smyth as the first Professor of Geography in 1978. John Sweeney, climatologist from the University of Glasgow, was appointed to take over the running of physical geography courses. In 1986, Shelagh Waddington, with interests in geographical education, began teaching second year practical classes. Then, in 1988, following the closure of Carysfort College of Education in Dublin, Jim Walsh joined the department; he was appointed Professor and Head in 1995. In 1991, the physical geographical dimension of the programme was further expanded with appointment of Paul Gibson, who came from the University of Ulster. With the steady increase in student numbers into the 1990s, the Department was enabled to expand its teaching staff with a corresponding expansion of its course offerings and research output: Brendan Bartley was appointed in 1994; Ro Charlton in 1996; and Rob Kitchin, in 1998. Thereafter, there was a rapid accumulation of teaching and research expertise in the Department: Ronan Foley joined in 2003; Stewart Fotheringham, Science Foundation Ireland Professor and Director of the National Centre for Geocomputation in 2004, with Martin Charlton and Jan Rigby; Steve McCarron, Adrian Kavanagh, and Sinead Kelly in 2005. Scotsman Mark Boyle was appointed Professor and Head in 2007, the same year another Scot, Alistair Fraser, joined the department. Boyle subsequently negotiated an expansion in staff resources with the appointments of Rowan Fealy and Conor Murphy. Mary Gilmartin followed in 2008 and Chris van Egeraat in 2010. Gerry Kearns, Karen Till and Brendan Gleeson were appointed in 2011, replacing Duffy, Breathnach, Pringle and Bartley who had retired. Throughout these years, the Geography department made serious attempts to carve out a distinctive identity driven by a need to construct a presence in the geographical community in Ireland, and increasingly in the media. The importance of reaching out – from external examiners and new appointments from beyond Ireland, to public service outside