Event Overview: ‘Visions of Democracy in Art and Literature’ - Trinity College Dublin, 19 June 2026
On Friday 19 June 2026, Dr Róisín Costello of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Law Department and the IHA’s Legal Humanities Working Group hosted the symposium ‘Visions of Democracy in Art and Literature’. This was the Legal Humanities Working Group’s (LHWG) second ‘co-badged’ event of this year, and our partners in this event were the journal Law and Humanities, who hold an annual roundtable event, and TCD’s Law Department. The event was organised in partnership with TCD’s Jean Monnet DEMCONEX Centre, and funded in part by the European Union. It was the first time the Law and Humanities roundtable had come to Ireland, and it attracted scholars from across Europe.
At this event, participants were invited to reflect on what free speech means in a democracy. Literature and films from around the world featured prominently in the day’s discussions. Among many other speakers, several members of the LHWG talked about their research. Dr Danny Shanahan (MSCA Fellow, Stanford and UCC) addressed parallels between representations of law in Irish and Kashmiri literature; Prof David Kenny (TCD) discussed the works of Jonathan Swift; Dr Sophie Doherty (OU) addressed the role of street art in promoting menstrual justice in Belfast. There was also mention of Dr Costello’s own forthcoming book, Law in Irish Literature: Critical Approaches to Institutions, Power and Identity (Edinburgh, 2027). This day was valuable as an opportunity to share the ideas of members of the LHWG and their colleagues, and as a way of cementing links with Law and Humanities, a leading journal in the field.
Adam Hanna is Senior Lecturer in Irish Literature in the Department of English at University College Cork. He has previously taught at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Bristol. He is the author of Northern Irish Poetry and Domestic Space (Palgrave, 2015) and Poetry, Politics, and the Law in Modern Ireland (Syracuse, 2022), and has co-edited three collections.
Published: 17 Aug 2026 Categories: Legal Humanities, English Literature, Irish Literature, Cultural Studies