Dr Emily Mark FitzGerald’s Art History PhD thesis was entitled ‘Memorials and Monuments to the Irish Famine: Commemorative Art and History’ (2008, UCD). Researched over a four-year period, her PhD is a critical overview of the monuments and commemorative activity connected with the 150th anniversary of the Irish Famine. Her research investigated how issues of place, form and memory were negotiated through the contemporary sculptural commemoration of the Irish Famine, in local, national and global contexts. This thesis offered the first large-scale documentation and critique of over eighty memorials to the Famine erected since 1990, and has involved extensive travel, site documentation, artist and committee interviews in Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, and the U.S.
Emily is currently preparing her thesis for publication in book form, and has begun a subsequent research project which examines the recent evolution of new ‘sites of memory’ of immigrant heritage, such as the Musée de la Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (France, 2007); and the redevelopment of Ellis Island (New York, ongoing). She is currently an Assistant Lecturer in UCD’s School of Art History and Cultural Policy, where she has taught art history and arts management for the past four years; she also maintains the website www.artsmanagement.ie . Emily has been attending the church since 2003 and was married here in 2006.

No doubt there are others in the congregation who have also achieved academic or other distinction in recent times. Please don’t be shy about letting us know. We’d love to hear from you.