Explore Your Archive 2025
Explore Your Archive 2025 focus week will run from Saturday November 29th to Sunday December 7th
Explore Your Archive is an annual campaign that showcases the best of archives and archive services in Ireland and the UK. Please read on for more about EYA and the daily themes, and check back soon for updates on our EYA ambassador for 2025/6, ARA Ireland’s launch of the focus week, and all the events as they come in.
ARA Ireland’s Explore Your Archive Ambassador 2024/25
We are thrilled to announce that ARA Ireland’s 2025/26 Explore Your Archive ambassador is Dr. Mary McAuliffe historian, lecturer and Director of Gender Studies at University College Dublin. She specialises in Irish women’s/ gender history, traumas histories of gendered and sexual violence of Ireland’s revolutionary period and histories of sexualities and has authored several publications, most recently, The politics of gender and sexuality in modern Ireland: A Reader (Four Courts Press, 2024) alongside Dr Jennifer Redmond and The Diaries of Kathleen Lynn – A Life Revealed through Personal Writing, UCD Press 2023 with Harriet Wheelock. We are delighted that Mary will be joining us for the official EYA launch.
ARA Ireland EYA Launch
We are also delighted to announce that our launch will take place in the Custom House Visitor Centre, Custom House Quay, North Wall, Dublin 1. Our ambassador for 2025/26 will be joining us on the evening.
The launch is free to attend but places are limited so please register here.
EYA 2025/26 Daily Themes
The campaign aims to open up the phenomenal archival collections held by organisations – public and private – whatever their size and scale, and wherever they are.
Throughout the week archives across the country will showcase their collections online, to help the public discover a piece of Irish history and culture. We will be updating the EYA and Featured pages as submissions come in, so please make sure to check back regularly. Submissions can be made directly to the Campaigns officer Erin McRae at erin.f.mcrae@gmail.com
For ARA Ireland’s customisable EYA poster please click here, and for our EYA logo please click here.
EYA 2025 Events
November 2025 to January 2026
Cork City and County Archives
Exhibition – The Tanist of Carbery: Daniel MacCarthy Glas and His Long Lost Archive
The Cork City and County Archives Service currently has an exhibition on display about the Daniel MacCarthy Glas Collection.
As well as the exhibition currently on display, the Cork City and County Archives Service is delighted to announce that it is launching for public access the archive of writer and historian Daniel MacCarthy Glas (died 1884), which was donated by Susan MacCarthy and Don MacCarthy, and family, of Salem, Oregon, USA, in 2017. The exhibition about Daniel and his archive is on display at the Archives and at other locations around Cork over the next year.
Daniel MacCarthy (Glas) [b.1807–d.1884] was the author of several works of fiction, but his great passion was the study of his MacCarthy ancestry and the history of Ireland. Most of the material in the Daniel MacCarthy (Glas) Collection relates to Daniel’s historical research into the life of Florence (Finian, Finghín) MacCarthy Reagh, Gaelic chieftain and scholar, and the MacCarthys of Gleannacroim, part of the ancient principality and territory of Carbery in west Cork. His books ‘The Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy Reagh …’ [1867] and ‘A Historical Pedigree of the Sliochd Feidhlimidh, the MacCarthys of Gleannacroim …’ [1875] drew on years of research in libraries and archives, as well as correspondence with the leading Irish scholars, antiquarians, archaeologists, and poets of the day, including John O’Donovan, Samuel Ferguson, Denis Florence MacCarthy, Aubrey Thomas De Vere, Thomas Keightley, and James Henthorn Todd, to name but a few.
As with any large personal or family archive, the scope of the collection is immense, documenting a range of topics: from the MacCarthy aristocratic lineage, to 19th century poetry and historiography, the Irish nationalist movement, the history of Early Modern Ireland, the French Revolution of 1848, the British Empire in India and South Africa, emigration, and the Great Famine and its dire impact on the local population in west Cork.
The archive has been painstakingly listed, arranged and catalogued in detail by the archivists of the Cork City and County Archives Service. Thanks to this, and the kind generosity of Susan and Don MacCarthy and family, the archive is now a permanent public resource for Cork.
One document in the archive has been identified as having immense cultural and historical significance: this is a 1784 family pedigree of the Gaelic prince Jeremiah MacCarthy (‘Diarmuid an Duna’) compiled by famous poet-schoolmaster John Collins of Myross, known as the last bard of Munster, who, it is said, could recite much of the ancient history and genealogies of the region. This unique document, written in a combination of both Irish and English, is one of very few original manuscripts that we know of in existence from Collins or indeed any other Gaelic scholar from the period. Written on parchment, the pedigree bears a wax seal of John Butler, Catholic Bishop of Cork, later Baron Dunboyne, who was a controversial figure. The pedigree has been subject to a detailed process of transcription and interpretation by Dr. Cornelius Buttimer formerly of UCC.
10 November – 8 December 2025
University of Galway
Presidential Inauguration Exhibition
Deirdre and Irial Finan Archives and Special Collections Reading Room, University of Galway Library
On 11 November, President Catherine Connolly, Ireland’s 10th President, and third female president was officially inaugurated into office. The 4th of December will see the 35th anniversary of when Mary Robinson, our 7th President and the first female President was inaugurated in 1995. To mark both occasions, a mini exhibition showcasing archival material from the Mary Robinson archive specifically relating to her inauguration, has been put on display.
It includes a poem written for the occasion, “Woman of the Mountain”, by Irish poet Paul Durcan who passed away earlier this year, letters and cards from children, the text of Robinson’s inaugural address, guest lists, press cuttings, a facsimile of her signed oath of office, and practice signatures where she trialled the quill and ink before having to use them officially. There is also an official programme of events, alongside programmes for the inauguration of her successors Mary McAleese and Michael D Higgins, which she attended as a former President.
Wednesday 26th November
University of Galway
Event – Celebration of Kerby A. Miller
On 26th November, The University of Galway Library invited Prof. Kerby A. Miller to an event to celebrate his donation of the Imirce archive, and to update on the ongoing work being carried out on this project, to coincide with Miller’s visit to Ireland. Miller’s generous donation of Irish emigrant letters to the University has led to the development of Imirce, a digital repository which enables access to these digitised letters. Kerby A. Miller is one of the pre-eminent scholars of Irish emigration and Irish diaspora identities. His landmark publication “Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America” (Oxford, 1985) was a 1986 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. In the 1970s, he began his research journey consulting texts already in the custody of libraries and archives on both sides of the Atlantic. Looking beyond those repositories to find the lived experiences of ordinary Irish people, he made appeals in regional and national newspapers to the Irish public to share their family correspondence with him. Kerby understood that these records hold significant sentimental value, so he and his research assistants copied, transcribed and, in the majority of cases, returned them to the senders. With the tendency of heirlooms to go astray in the generations that have followed, Miller’s carefully collected derivatives may now represent the last existing versions of these records.
Kerby continued this practice for five decades. The result is a large and highly focused collection of material that provides three centuries of intimate insights on everyday life as an emigrant from a variety of perspectives influenced by class, religion, gender and politics. It was the University of Galway’s great honour to receive the donation of the Kerby A. Miller Collection in 2021.
The Kerby A. Miller Collection was digitised in its entirety in early 2023 (more than 150,000 pages). Over the last two years, the collection has been catalogued to item level for release online to a dedicated digital collections repository called Imirce (the Irish word for ‘emigration’). In addition to letters, Miller collected longer emigrant narratives, including memoirs, journals, diaries, oral history interviews, biographies and autobiographies.
The Imirce project stands as a model of what collaboration across the University of Galway can achieve, bringing together the Library’s Heritage Collections and Open & Digital Research teams with the academic leadership of the School of History and Philosophy and the School of English, Media and Creative Arts. Guided by Catriona Cannon, Cillian Joy, Prof. Breandán Mac Suibhne and Prof. Daniel Carey, this multidisciplinary partnership has enabled a project whose scope matches the richness of the material it makes accessible. Imirce not only offers unparalleled access to first-hand accounts of the Irish emigrant experience over many decades, but also opens pathways for exploring broader themes of literacy, creativity, memory and identity. In doing so, it has inspired new avenues of research, teaching and artistic interpretation, while allowing the Library to expand its vision of engagement, access and digital innovation for our community and beyond.
November 2025 – February 2026
University of Galway
Druid50 Exhibition
University of Galway Library Exhibition space
2025 has been the year of Druid. It marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Druid Theatre company in 1975 by a group of then recent graduates from the University: Garry Hynes, Marie Mullen, and Mick Lally. The company established itself over the summer of 1975 when Druid performed their first season of plays, with The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge being their first production. Since then it has grown to become one of the world’s most renowned independent theatre companies.
The Druid archive collects the materials related to fifty years of Druid making theatre in Galway and touring nationally and internationally, be it village halls in rural Ireland to major venues on Broadway. The archive is filled with annotated production scripts, photographs, posters, press materials, show programmes, rehearsal notes, as well as a digital collection of oral histories and show recordings.
Tuesday 2nd December
National Library of Ireland
Talk – Researching Your Family History in Church Records
In person or online via Zoom
Join in-person or online to learn about using church records to research your family history at the National Library of Ireland.
This talk will examine in detail the digital archive of the NLI’s Catholic Registers website with a focus on family history research. We will identify how to research your family more broadly across various church denomination records. Church records remain the most vital genealogical record prior to the establishment of civil birth and marriage records in Ireland in 1864.
Important Note:
This is a hybrid event taking place in the Joly Theatre at 7-8 Kildare St. and simultaneously livestreamed to online attendees via Zoom. Our attendees are welcome to join us in person OR online via Zoom. Please book your free ticket below based on whether you will be attending in person at 7-8 Kildare St. or online via Zoom.
3rd December – 30 January 2026
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
History Detectives exhibition
PRONI exhibition space
The History Detectives are Moira Concannon, Leanna Russell and Lesley Simpson. This exhibition is based on the research carried out for their recently published book, Balloo, Killinchy: a hidden history. The main sources were original documents in PRONI and newspaper archives, along with birth, marriage and death certificates and genealogical sites such as Ancestry. These sources are explored in the exhibition, using examples of the stories uncovered. The authors hope to inspire others to investigate their own local areas.
This exhibition is available to view onsite at PRONI in the exhibition space on the ground floor.
Thursday 4th December
University of Galway
Book launch – Young Offenders: Children and Crime in Ireland, 1850-1908
4pm – 5pm, G10 , The Hardiman Building, University of Galway
The University of Galway invite you to celebrate the launch of Young Offenders: Children and Crime in Ireland, 1850-1908 by Geraldine Curtin. Launched by Dr. Caitríona Clear, this book looks at the lives and crimes of imprisoned and instituionalised children in Ireland from 1850 to 1908 against the backdrop of the reformatory movement.
If wishing to attend, please RSVP to clodagh.lennon@universityofgalway.ie
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
PRONI on tour – Ballymena Library
PRONI on Tour brings history straight to people’s doorsteps. What started in May 2023 with Libraries NI hosting the original Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) document in Omagh, Derry Central and Belfast Central libraries, has grown into a wider programme, bringing archives, exhibitions, rare historical collections and family history expertise to local libraries.
A ‘Getting Started’ workshop will be held at 12.30pm during the visit. This workshop has been designed to help you get started using PRONI’s own online services and other online resources. It is also a chance for you to ask your questions directly to PRONI staff! Further information on the workshop can be found here
Saturday 6th December
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
Workshop – Christmas Bauble Decorating
Join PRONI staff for a hands-on Christmas painting workshop inspired by archival treasures. In this workshop, you will use images from the archive as inspiration for decorating your wooden Christmas tree baubles. The workshop will include a brief introduction to the archives, the story of the archival images selected for inspiration, and some social, hands-on bauble painting and decorating based on what images have inspired you.
Materials will be provided. Open to all ages and levels of experience. This is not an art class but a space for getting creative, inspired, and having fun.
Tickets for the workshop are available here