Preserving the records of a Travelling Community

Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies(LUCAS), in association with The Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool, is delighted to welcome Dr Elizabeth Mullins (Director of the MA in Archives and Records Management programme, University College Dublin) for the LUCAS Annual Lecture. Dr Mullins' talk will focus on an ongoing project to preserve the archive of a Roman Catholic parish that is dedicated to members of the Irish Travelling Community.

Encompassing the whole geographic diocese of Dublin, the Parish of the Travelling People is unique in Ireland. Since its establishment in 1980, the parish has combined activism for Traveller human rights with strong pastoral support and education. Preservation of the archive of the parish started in February 2023, when the speaker was invited by Fr Paul O’Driscoll, then parish priest, to work with members of the community to preserve the collection. The focus of the archival work to this point has been mainly on the preservation of a large collection of community generated photographs, which document unique aspects of the spiritual life of the Travelling people and the access to which has been an integral part of visiting the parish building over the years. This paper will draw out the learnings that have come from working with this unique community and explore the extent to which this connects to a range of contemporary archival theory relating to community archives, indigenous heritage, and the significance of understanding the information culture and history of this type of religious archive.

Dr Elizabeth Mullins is the director of the MA in Archives and Records Management programme in University College Dublin, which is the professionally accredited training programme for archivists in Ireland. She combines her work as an archival educator with archival research and consultancy work, particularly in the context of religious archives. She also continues to research in her original academic field of early medieval manuscript culture.

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