Emilie Pine Named 2024 Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University
Villanova, Pa. – Villanova University selected Emilie Pine, PhD, an award-winning Irish creative writer and scholar as the 2024 Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Chair of Irish Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The visiting writer-in-residence program offers Irish Studies students the enriching opportunity to engage with one of Ireland’s finest authors.
Dr. Pine will spend three weeks of the spring semester at Villanova giving presentations and readings and visiting undergraduate courses to discuss her creative writing and scholarship.
Dr. 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). Dr. Pine served as editor of the Irish University Review from 2017 to 2021.
Widely regarded as a leading scholar of Irish cultural memory, Dr. Pine published The Memory Marketplace: Witnessing Pain in Contemporary Theatre (2020) and led Industrial Memories, an Irish Research Council funded project to witness Ireland's historic institutional abuse. She continues to run the ongoing oral-history project Survivors Stories with the National Folklore Collection.
As a writer, Dr. Pine 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, which won the 2018 Irish Book of the Year award and has been translated into 15 languages. Her novel Ruth & Pen (2022) won the 2023 Kate O’Brien First Novel Award.
As part of the 2024 Villanova Literary Festival, Dr. Pine will present a reading on March 14 at 7 p.m., preceded by a reception starting at 6 p.m., in the Presidents' Lounge, Connelly Center on Villanova’s campus. This event is free and open to the public.
The Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Chair of Irish Studies, inaugurated in 2000, has become one of the most prestigious Irish Studies positions in the United States. Former Heimbold Chairs include luminaries from the Irish literary arts such as Mary O’Donoghue, Emma Dabiri, Hannah Khalil, Owen McCafferty, Peter Fallon, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Eamon Greenan, Marina Carr, Vona Groarke, Conor O’Callaghan, Sebastian Barry, Justin Quinn, Claire Keegan, Gerald Dawe, John McAuliffe, Moya Cannon, Hugh Hamilton, Mary O’Malley and Eamonn Wall.
About the Villanova Center for Irish Studies: The Center for Irish Studies at Villanova University has been a leader for four decades in interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship on Ireland in a global framework. The Center connects students to local community organizations while also preparing them to become citizens equipped to take on the world’s most pressing challenges. Through liberal arts-focused academics, multi-disciplinary scholarship and key partnerships, the Center provides students with research, study abroad and employment opportunities.
About Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been the heart of the Villanova learning experience, offering foundational courses for undergraduate students in every college of the University. Serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, the College is committed to fortifying them with intellectual rigor, multidisciplinary knowledge, moral courage and a global perspective. The College has more than 40 academic departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences.