School of  Religions, Theology and Ecumenics

Venue: Lecture Theatre, Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin

‘Religion, Reconciliation and the EuroRare Project’

Tuesday Jan 31, 2012, 17:00 – 19:00

Speaker: Prof. Martin Leiner (Friedrich Schiller University of Jena / Germany)
Prof. Martin Leiner is Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He is the Director of the EURORARE Project on ‘Religions as Agents of Reconciliation?’

All welcome.

EURORARE is a collaborative social science and humanities research project.

One of our future challenges is to create a comprehensive understanding of actions with religious justifications. This raises crucial questions: How do religions contribute to violence and/or reconciliation? Do they have an impact at all? In the last decade there has been increased focus on the destabilizing impact of religiously based thinking and acting. Academic research and media portrayals of religion have emphasised its violent manifestations. Much less attention has been paid to the peaceful side of religion in reconciliation processes during or in the aftermath of a conflict.

EuroRARE will explore these questions by analysing the connections between religious traditions, religiously justified actions, violence and/or reconciliation. Its scientific aim is to develop a framework for a better understanding of the role of religion in conflicts and post-conflict societies.

For futher information, see: http://www.religion-and-reconciliation.eu

Professor Gilbert Achcar, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

Thursday, 2 February 7pm-9pm

Thomas Davis lecture theatre, Arts Building, TCD

You can download a flyer for the event here.

The book will be available for the special launch price of 20 euros.

Please RSVP to Gladys Ganiel, E: gganiel@tcd.ie

 ‘Disarmament and the UN’, By Daithi O’Ceallaigh

Director of Institute for International and European Affairs

Former Irish Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva (2007-2009)

Thursday Dec 1, 10am-12pm,
IIIS Seminar Room, 6^th Floor, Arts Building Trinity

Dr Daithi O’Ceallaigh is Director General of the Institute of International and European Affairs and Chairman of the Press Council of Ireland. He is also former Irish Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva (2007-2009), former Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2001-2007) and former Irish Ambassador to Finland and Estonia (1993-1998).

A graduate of University College, Dublin, Mr O Ceallaigh joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1973, and took up posts in Moscow, London, Belfast, New York, Finland and Estonia, before serving as ambassador to London from 2001 to 2007.He later became ambassador to the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, and in 2008 headed an Irish team which negotiated the Convention to Prohibit Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin by 107 states. The convention bans all use and possession of the cluster munitions. In June 2010 the Institute’s Honorary Professor Dáithí O’Ceallaigh was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Geneva School of Diplomacy for his role in the negotiation of the Convention to prohibit the use of Cluster Munitions.

Tea/coffee, nibbles and live traditional music will feature from 6 pm. At around 6.45 Glenn Jordan, Director of EBM’s Skainos project and author of Not of This World: Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland (Blackstaff, 2002) will speak about the book. He will be introduced by Prof Geraldine Smyth, Head of the Irish School of Ecumenics.

Please RSVP to Gladys Ganiel (gganiel@tcd.ie) by Tues 25 October.

Evangelical Journeys will be available at a special price of £15 at the launch. It is published by UCD Press.

A review of the book is available here.

A flyer for the launch is available here.

Date: Friday October 21st, 2011

Time: 16.00-18.00

Venue: IIIS Seminar Room, 6th Floor Arts Building, Trinity College David Reiff will discuss his recent book Against Remembrance, followed by comments on healing through remembering in Northern Ireland by Geraldine Smyth and memory in Israel/Palestine by Ronit Lentin. Internationally acclaimed author and journalist David Rieff currently teaches History of Humanitarian Action at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences-Po.During the 1990s, he covered conflicts in Africa (Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Liberia), the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo), and Central Asia. Now a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and a contributing editor for the New Republic, he has written extensively about Iraq, and, more recently, about Latin America. He is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research, a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Additionally, he is a board member of Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute and of Independent Diplomat. He is the author of eight books, including Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West and A Bed for the Night:Humanitarianism in Crisis. His memoir of his mother’s final illness, Swimming in a Sea of Death, appeared in January 2008. His most recent book is entitled Against Remembrance (2009).Currently he is working on a book about the global food crisis.

The seminars are part of the Irish School of Ecumenics IRCHSS-funded project, ‘Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism.’

Representing the final phase of a three year process, this series of seminars is concerned with the re-articulation of the ecumenical project in light of the increasingly multi-religious and secular contexts of today. Taking, as its particular frame of reference, the rich resources which have been generated through reconciliatory responses to Ireland’s civil and religious conflict, the aim is to develop an Irish contextual theology which will contribute, at the global level, to an ecumenical vision for the 21st century. The seminars will address the issues through the lenses of ethics, theology and ecclesiology.

Reshaping the Ethical Imagination – 22 October

Speakers:

‘Public theology in an Irish Key,’ Enda McDonagh

‘Restoring the Fabric of Irish Economic and Social Life,’ Gerry O’Hanlon

‘Relations of Reciprocity: Contemporary Religiosity and Convictional Pluralism,’ Celia Kenny

‘Public Theology of Reconciliation,’ David Tombs

‘Broken Dialogue, Fractured Faith and Elusive Truth,’ Peter Admirand

In Search of an Irish Church – 2 November

‘The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Global Perspective,’ Peter de Mey

Respondents: Adrian Cristea, Mark Patrick Hederman, Anne Thurston

‘The Ecclesial Shape of Repentance,’ Andrew Pierce

‘Addressing the Legacy of Abuse: Ecumenics as Resource and Method,’ Geraldine Smyth

Embedded Memory and the Theological Contours of Division – 19 December

‘Unfinished History: Religion and Identity in Ireland,’ Marianne Elliot

‘The Theological Contours of Division,’ Alan Ford

‘The Churches and Embedded Memory,’ Oliver Rafferty

The seminar series is free and lunch will be provided. To register, please RSVP cgkenny@tcd.ie

You can download a poster about the series here.

Javier Gárate is from Chile and works for the War Resisters International based in London. His exploration of Indian nonviolence can be found on the INNATE website under ‘Readings in Nonviolence’ for April 2011—see www.innatenonviolence.org and go to ‘Readings’.

The talk will be based on Dr Ganiel’s research for the Irish School of Ecumenics’ Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism research project, which is funded by the IRCHSS.

All are welcome – you do not need to be a member of the Inter Faith Forum.