The 28th ICM committee is delighted to announce our plenary speakers. Professor Howard Clarke and Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh will address the conference in a special plenary session that will explore the material reality of Viking Dublin, counterpointed with the mythologisation of Brian Boru.
Howard Clarke is professor emeritus of medieval socio-economic history at University College Dublin and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. His Viking-related work includes Ireland and Scandinavia in the early Viking Age, edited jointly with Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Raghnall Ó Floinn (1998), together with articles on Viking-Age Dublin, other towns, warfare and the question of christianization. Currently he is preparing with Ruth Johnson an edited collection entitled Before and after the battle of Clontarf: the Vikings in Ireland and Beyond.
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh is the Reader in Celtic at ASNC, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College. She has published widely on a variety of topics concerned with medieval Irish literature and culture. Her book publications include Ireland and Scandinavia in the early Viking Age, edited jointly with Howard Clarke and Raghnall Ó Floinn (1998). She is the author of Brian Boru: Ireland’s Greatest King?