THURSDAY, 11TH SEPTEMBER

Noon – 4.30 -  Registration at the Senior Common Room, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1 College Gardens, Belfast BT9 6BQ (Tel; 028 90 665938/664501).

4.45 - Drinks reception in engineering Hall of the Ulster Museum

5.30 - Introductory lecture at the Ulster museum:
Trevor Parkhill: Blood, sweat and tears: the complimentary role of artefacts and documents in telling the story of work experience.
This lecture by Trevor Parkhill, Keeper of history at the Ulster Museum, will consider the ‘history from below’ value to be found in memoirs and museum objects in the specific context of the north of Ireland. 

6.30 - Dinner in The Senior common Room

8.00 - Reception at Institute of Irish Studies, 6 Fitzwilliam Street, Belfast.


FRIDAY, 12TH SEPTEMBER

All morning sessions take place in the Ulster Museum

7.30-8.30 - Breakfast at The Senior Common Room

9.00 - Welcome from Gavin Sprott, President of the Society for Folk Life Studies

9.05 - David Fitzpatrick (Trinity College Dublin): Exporting the brotherhood: Orangeism abroad.
The Loyal Orange Institution was one of several 19th-century fraternities that spread rapidly beyond their Irish or British origins and flourished in the British Empire and the USA. This paper considers several plausible explanations for the appeal of Orangeism outside Ireland.

9.50 - Margaret Humphreys (University College Cork): The ethnography of the dance event.
A study of the interactive behaviour at dance events from traditional and contemporary perspectives in terms of its social importance.

9.50 - Brian Crowley (Pearse Museum): James and Patrick Pearse.
A study of the life of James Pearse and the influence of this English radical freethinker had on his son Patrick, an Irish culturist nationalist and revolutionary.

11.15 - Coffee

11.30 - Jane Leonard (Ulster Museum): An outline history of mural painting in Ulster since 1900 and a summary of developments since the cease-fires. Followed by a bus tour of selected murals.

2.00 - Lunch at the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Cultra

2.30 - Tour of the Ulster Folk and Transport museum.

4.30 - Coffee followed by the Annual General Meeting of the Society.

5.45 - Members’ papers:
Brian Loughbrough: More about water: Papplewick Pumping Station 1884.
John Burnett (National museums of Scotland): Drinking goats’ whey for health: an 18th century cure.
Alan Pearsall: Some shipping problems at Londonderry.

7.30-10.00 - Barbecue, with opportunities for delegates to display their talents in spontaneous entertainment!

10.00 - Return by bus to The Senior Common Room.


SATURDAY, 13th SEPTEMBER
All morning sessions take place in the Ulster American Folk Park

7.30-9.00 - Breakfast at The Senior Common Room

9.15 - Depart by bus for Ulster American Folk Park, Omagh

11.15 - Coffee

11.30 - Bo Lonnqvist (University of JYVÄSKYLÄ, Middle Finland): The lost future: can culture survive in exile?
This study is based on 60 life stories related by Germans from the Banat region of Romania. This group has declined from a population of 400,000 before the 1820s to around 30,000 today. Why did these people leave their native regions and how have they experienced their new lives in Germany? What is their relationship to their former native region and how does it live on in memories, history, symbols and trips back to their former homes?

12.10 - Christine Stevens (Museum of Welsh Life): Welsh peasant dress: workwear or national costume?
Using a wide variety of sources an investigation will be made of the main elements in Welsh women’s rural dress and their survival as part of a conscious national dress. This historical view will be compared with modern examples of the expression of national sentiment through dress.

12.50 - Lunch

1.40 - Brian Lambkin (Centre for Migration Studies, Ulster American Folk Park): The fabric of memory, identity and diaspora: a recently-discovered Irish needlework sampler from Australia
The importance of memory, identity and diaspora in Irish migration studies will be discussed with reference to a needlework sampler made by Dorcas McGee, who emigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1853. It commemorates her brother, Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825-68), newspaper editor, poet, Young Ireland leader and ‘founding father’ of Canada.

2.20 - Heather Holmes: Constructing identities for the Irish migratory potato workers in Scotland
This paper examines the identities constructed of the Irish migratory potato workers during the twentieth century, especially the period 1900 to 1971. It assesses how these identities were constructed and suggests the reasons for their construction.

3.00-5.00 - Tour of the Ulster American Folk Park

5.15 - Coffee

5.30 - Return by bus to The Senior Common Room

8.00 - Conference dinner and President’s Address at The Senior Common Room.


SUNDAY, 14th SEPTEMBER
Information regarding church services will be available for those wishing to attend
All morning sessions take place in the Ulster Museum

7.30-9.00 - Breakfast at The Senior Common Room

10.15 - David Warm: Jewish settlement in Northern Ireland during WWII
This paper will explore personal testimonies of Jewish refugees to Northern Ireland during World War Two.

11.00 - Michael McCaughan (Ulster Folk and Transport Museum): Real and imagined worlds
This paper examines the seafaring connections between Joseph Conrad, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, and Captain John McWhir, a shipmaster from Ballyhalbert on the Ards Peninsula of Co Down.

11.45 - Comfort break (please note, coffee and tea will NOT be available)

12.00 - William Blair (Mid-Antrim Museums Service): Devising an evaluation interpretative strategy
This paper will examine ethnicity and identity with regard to the process of interpretative planning for a new regional museum in Ballymena, Co Antrim.

12.45 - Concluding discussion

1.15 - Lunch at The senior Common Room.

End of conference