Last Saturday, many leading academics gathered in the National Museum to celebrate the work of historian Sister Benvenuta, Margaret MacCurtain with a Festschrift in her honour. The President, Mrs McAleese, came and praised Sister Ben for both her academic work and her community activism, and the museum director Pat Wallace and Dr Maryann Valiulis, who co-edited the text with Mary O'Dowd, also spoke.
The party ended a day-long conference entitled "Women in Revolution" and many of the keynote speakers were there to celebrate Sister Benvenuta's work, including Kevin O'Neill of the Boston College of Irish Studies, Sian Reynolds of the University of Stirling, and Margaret Ward of Bath Spa University College, who launched her own book on Hannah Sheehy Skeffington in the Irish Writer's Centre last Friday.
Other friends and admirers present on Saturday included David Dixon, Jean White and Sheila Greene of Trinity College; Mary Daly, Angela Bourke and Helen Burke of UCD; Jackie Hill of Maynooth; Kate Beaumont of University of Glasgow; Maria Luddy, of the women's history archives project, as well as many members of the Dominican order.
Seamus Cashman of Wolfhound Press who published the festschrift, which, for all of you who never studied German, means writings presented to a scholar.