The pasts, presents and futures of transnational and global Irish Studies: “Snapshots”

As with any other discipline, we are periodically drawn towards reviewing the trajectory of Irish Studies, contemplating possible future directions: What is happening now? What should come next? Four scholars at varying stages of their academic careers and located in tertiary institutions in Ireland, USA, and Australia address these questions with specific reference to the transnational or global aspects of Irish Studies, a key focus of this special issue. Their brief “snapshots” take us on a journey starting with gendered migrant histories and the methodological challenges facing the often-disappointed researcher seeking the experiences of Irish-speaking diasporas, before engaging with new ways of confronting age-old questions about both Irish migrants’ implication in the dispossession of Indigenous populations and the historical racialisation of Irishness in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. We are then introduced to research into revolutionary Ireland’s collective global consciousness and the development of a Global Irish Studies which seeks to create a sustainable dialectic between Irish and non-Irish-based scholars, finishing with the assertion that Ireland has always been a porous and transnational space, and that while it may have been hiding in plain sight as it were, the international and relational aspect of national literatures are profound and unavoidable.