Calendar Of Events

Conference: Brigid: Woman of Mystery, Woman of Inspiration Saturday, April 22nd, 2023 10:30am – 4:00pm. Cost: €25.00 (inclusive of light lunch) Venue: Solas Bhride Centre, Tully Road Kildare Town R51 Y281   'Boss Brigid: the lasting legacy of the founder of Kildare' In this talk Dr Wycherley will discuss the early history of Brigid and her church of Kildare. She will explain how a focus on a ‘pagan goddess’ of the same name overshadows what is truly interesting about St Brigid, especially in light of her new bank holiday and the implications for modern feminism.  While the miracle-working saint and the awesome goddess are both worthy subjects for veneration, encapsulating virtues such as inclusivity, strength, kindness and healing, Dr Wycherley will show how the real ‘flesh and blood’ woman behind it all was much more extraordinary. Dr Niamh Wycherley works in the Department of Early Irish as a medieval historian, specialising in the early Irish Church. She won the NUI Publication Prize in History in 2017 for her book, The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland. She is the Principal Investigator of the 4-year SFI-IRC Pathway project 'Power and Patronage in Medieval Ireland: Clonard from the sixth to twelfth centuries'. She contributes regularly to RTÉ Brainstorm and television programmes such as the RTÉ 1 documentary 'Finding Brigid', with Siobhán McSweeney. ‘The Wild and the Sacred. Listening to the voices of Earth’ Thomas Berry has written that “We know the deep wonder that we are, but we also sense how detached we have become from the source of that wonder.” This talk focuses on reconnecting with that source of wonder through specifically focussing on the voices of Earth, and how they might guide us through this ecologically perilous time. Niamh Brennan, PhD., is a writer and educator. For the past ten years she has been engaged in research and teaching in the area of eco-cosmology and the environmental humanities. Her research focuses on the ecological crisis, whose effects are growing in our daily lives and raising concerns about the future of all life. She underscores the role philosophy and spirituality play in ecological thinking. She is author of ‘The human in the Universe’ (Wyndham Hall Press, 2014) and co-author with Greg Morter of ‘The Universe Story in Science and Myth’ (Green Spirit, 2016). She has contributed to several journals including ‘Religions’, ‘Worldviews: Global Religions, Ecology and Culture’, ‘Spirituality’ and ‘The Furrow'.