The 5th Markievicz School was held on Saturday 23rd May 2015 in Liberty Hall Theatre, discussion panels included Direct Provision & Reproductive Rights!
Speakers...
Markievicz lecture
Sinéad McCoole
Sinéad McCoole is an author, historian, curator, script-writer and broadcaster. Her books include Hazel A Life of Lady Lavery (1996), Guns and Chiffon (1997), The Reseacher's Handbook (2000), No Ordinary Women Irish Female Activities 1900-1923 (2003) and Passion and Politics (2010). Her most recent book is Easter Widows published by Doubleday Ireland in 2014. She has curated exhibitions on Irish history and Irish art, including Society and Politics and Passion and Politics in Dublin City Hugh Lane Gallery and the Robert Emmet Bi-centenary Exhibition and Guns and Chiffon in Kilmainham Jail. The latter toured in the US in 1998. Also in the US, she curated Crossings and Island: Drawing Conclusions Mapping the Irish at the American Irish Historical Society, New York. She oversaw the establishment of the multi-award winning Jackie Clarke Collection and is a member of the Government's Expert Advisory Group on the Decade of Centenaries.
Biography
Emily Logan
Emily Logan is the first Chief Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, appointed by President Michael D Higgins on 31 October 2014. She previously served as Ireland’s first Ombudsman for Children. In 2008, she was appointed to the position of President of the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children and remained on the executive until September 2011. In 2013 she was appointed in a personal capacity by the Minister for Justice to undertake a statutory inquiry into the taking into care of two children from two Roma families by An Garda Síochána.
https://vimeo.com/130935083
Direct Provision
Liam Thornton
Dr. Liam Thornton is a lecturer in law in UCD School of Law. Liam has a strong interest in social justice and law, and researches and publishes on issues relating to welfare law, asylum law and international & European human rights law.
https://vimeo.com/130935084
Karen McHugh
Karen McHugh has worked in the human rights and social justice sector for almost 20 years and became CEO of Doras Luimní in January 2009. Prior to that Karen worked in the UK with the Irish Diaspora in a number of roles so migrant experience and migrant journey is core to her work. In Doras Luimní, Karen and her team, are lobbying for the abolishment of Direct Provision and are running a number of campaigns both in Limerick and nationally calling for change.
https://vimeo.com/130935088
Kubby Olatilewa
Kubby Olatilewa came to Ireland 10 years ago. For all of that time she has lived in Direct Provision, the first two weeks in Dublin and the next 10 years in Knockalisheen DP Centre in Co. Clare. She has two children aged 12 and 9, the youngest born into the system. Direct Provision is the only home that she and her children know in Ireland.
Reproductive Rights
Anthea McTeirnan
Anthea McTeirnan is a journalist with The Irish Times, the former chair of the Irish Family Planning Association, a member of the National Women’s Council’s advisory group on reproductive rights, a director of the Irish Feminist Network and a campaigner on equality issues. She worked with the late Michael Solomons on his biographical polemic Pro Life? The Irish Question. She is also the mother of two sons.
https://vimeo.com/130962523
Goretti Horgan
Goretti Horgan has been active in the fight for abortion rights in Ireland since 1980, in the South with the Women's Right to Choose Group and Anti Amendment Campaign and, since 1986 in the North where she is a founder-member of Alliance for Choice. She is an active socialist and a lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Ulster, where she is Branch Sec of the University and Colleges Union.
https://vimeo.com/130971133
Mairead Enright
Mairead Enright is a lecturer in law at the University of Kent, a member of Lawyers for Choice and a blogger at www.humanrights.ie. Her research is in feminist legal theory, and she has particular interests in law and religion, redress for historical gender-based violence, and the politics of reproductive rights. She is a co-director of the Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project (www.feministjudging.ie). She is currently working on a project about the illegal distribution and supply of contraceptives in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s.
https://vimeo.com/130971135
Ruth Riddick
Pioneering service provider Ruth Riddick successfully sued Ireland at the European Court of Human Rights in the landmark freedom of information case (Open Door Counselling, 1992); a judgment leading to constitutional and legal reform. Her polemical writing on a woman’s right to choose appears in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing and as one of A Dozen Lips (Attic Press). Featured in many international publications, she regular contributes to the Catholics for Choice newsjournal, Conscience. A certified educator and peer coach, Ruth Riddick is Founding Director of Sobriety Together™. She has been honored by the Caron Foundation for over a decade of recovery activism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byxbIl_Ir7Y
