THE CHARLES A. HEIMBOLD JR. CHAIR

The Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Chair of Irish Studies is held in the spring semester of each academic year by a distinguished Irish writer. Inaugurated in 2000, it has become one of the most prestigious Irish Studies positions in the United States.

The Heimbold Professor typically teaches two undergraduate seminar courses—one in Creative Writing and one in Irish Literature, allowing Irish Studies students to have the enriching experience of a close classroom experience with Ireland's finest voices—and gives presentation(s) or reading(s) on campus, including as part of the annual Villanova Literary Festival.

MEET THE CHAIR

Emilie Pine is Professor of Modern Drama in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. She has published widely as an academic and critic, including The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Palgrave, 2011), and most recently The Memory Marketplace: Witnessing Pain in Contemporary Theatre (Indiana University Press, 2020), and she was Editor of the Irish University Review 2017-2021. From 2015-19 Emilie was PI of Industrial Memories, an Irish Research Council funded project to witness Ireland's historic institutional abuse (https://industrialmemories.ucd.ie) and runs the ongoing oral-history project Survivors Stories with the National Folklore Collection. As a writer, Emilie collaborated with ANU Productions on the Ulysses 2.2 project in 2023, creating All Hardest of Woman at the National Maternity Hospital; her first play, Good Sex, was a collaboration with Dead Centre Theatre Company, and was shortlisted for Best New Play and Best Production at the 2023 Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. She is the author of the bestselling essay collection, Notes to Self, winner of the 2018 Irish Book of the Year award and which has been translated into 15 languages. Her novel Ruth & Pen (2022) won the 2023 Kate O’Brien First Novel Award.