Shifting Skies: influences of and on Irish aviation

One-day interdisciplinary event exploring aviation’s influence on Irish society - design, politics, culture and innovation. Shifting Skies: influences of and on Irish aviation is a one-day, interdisciplinary symposium that will explore the impact and influence of aviation on Irish society. Speakers will address a wide range of issues relating to design and manufacturing, architecture, politics, environmentalism, gastronomy, economics, literature, international relations, and engineering. The symposium complements the exhibition Come Fly With Me: Aviation, tourism and Irish design, curated by Linda King and currently running at the National Print Museum until 17 December 2026. Research for the exhibition was conducted with the financial support of Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland, under grant number [NF/2025/12893]. Speakers and presenters include: Linda King: Come Fly With Me: aviation marketing as a reflection of Irish identity Candace White: Dublin Airport as Utopian Dream: Glamour, Modernity, Style Keith McLoughlin: ‘A grand way to shoot home from Paris on Saturday afternoon’: Concorde comes to Ireland Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire: Feasting in the ambience of AvGas and shining propellers: Fine Dining at Irish Airports Michael Kennedy: Statecraft and sovereignty in the skies. Aviation strategies, geopolitics, and Irish foreign policy: 1919-58 Sara Donaldson: Aer Lingus Uniforms in the 1950s and 1960s: a Golden Age for Irish Fashion and Textiles Siobhan Tiernan: The Evolution of Irish Airline Business Models Luke Gibbons: Flights of the Imagination: Aerial Gothic in Irish Fiction Jim Deegan: Irish tourism performance: the critical role of aviation for an island economy Ronan McGreevy: Aviation visionary: How Seán Lemass prepared Ireland for the jet age [Full detailed programme to follow.] Speaker biographies Jim Deegan Jim Deegan is the Director of the National Centre for Tourism Policy Studies (NCTPS), University of Limerick (UL), a member of the Economics Department (Head of department, 2011-2016) and Professor of Tourism Policy. He is an economist by training, and his research interests and publications are in all facets of public policy for tourism. As director of the NCTPS at UL he has raised more than €6 million through project research and philanthropic donations that has funded research scholarships for more than 25 students to study tourism at postgraduate level. His most recent publication (September 2026) with Dr Ernesto Batista Sanchez outlines a new methodology to profile tourist arrivals that incorporates WiFi data. Sara Donaldson Sara Donaldson is a PhD Researcher at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. She was a awarded a Northern Bridge Consortium Scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) to support her doctoral research into her family’s firm, C.H. Bates & Co, which operated from Kilmainham Mills, Dublin as Ireland’s only independent cloth finishing firm. Bates finished tweed for Avoca Handweavers, Botany, Magee, McNutt and Molloy, and Dublin’s leading couture salons and tailoring establishments. Sara lectures in the History of Art, and Design and Fashion at Griffith College Dublin, and writes and lectures for the National Gallery of Ireland. Luke Gibbons Luke Gibbons has taught as Professor of Irish Studies at Maynooth University and the University of Notre Dame. His most recent book is James Joyce and the Irish Revolution (2023) Michael Kennedy Dr Michael Kennedy is the Executive Editor of the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy Research Programme. For over thirty years he has researched and published widely on Irish diplomatic history, covering broad themes such as Ireland’s membership of the League of Nations and the United Nations, cross border relations in Ireland and more focussed areas including Ireland’s second world war neutrality, Ireland’s relationship with Japan, and the military and diplomatic history of Ireland’s involvement in UN peacekeeping in Congo. He regularly appears on tv and radio discussing modern Irish history, and he is an active public historian. Linda King Dr Linda King is a cultural historian, curator and broadcaster specialising in interdisciplinary research. She sits on the Historical Studies Committee of the Royal Irish Academy (2022-) and sat on the Board of the National Museum of Ireland (2018-22). She has published widely on Irish design, authoring the first comprehensive surveys in this field (some for the RIA). Her PhD analysed the advertising output of Aer Lingus in the 1950s and 1960s, using posters to demonstrate the seismic impact of the company on Ireland’s socio-economic development. She is Senior Lecturer in Design and Visual Culture in IADT. Mairtín Mac Con Iomaire Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire is Co-PI at the Technological University Dublin Centre for Irish Studies. He is co-founder and chair of the biennial Dublin Gastronomy Symposium and former chair of the Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies in TU Dublin. He has co-edited several books and journals, most notably Irish Food History: A Companion (Royal Irish Academy; EUt+ Academic Press, 2024) which was awarded the best culinary history book in the world for 2024. In 2025, Máirtín was awarded his second PhD for a thesis titled ‘Championing Food Studies within the Field of Irish Studies: An Serendipitous Autoethnographic Journey’. Ronan McGreevy Ronan McGreevy is an Irish Times journalist, videographer and the author of many books on Irish history. His latest book is Seán Lemass: The Lost Memoir in which Ireland’s most popular Taoiseach reflects on his 50 years in politics. Keith McLoughlin Dr Keith Mc Loughlin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Bristol. A graduate of University College Dublin, he is a historian of technology and his previous publications include The British Left and the Defence Economy, which was published by Manchester University Press. He is currently working on a social history of Concorde with a focus on Bristol, which he has titled Supersonic City. Siobhán Tiernan Siobhan Tiernan was awarded her PhD from the University of Limerick in 1995. Her thesis was entitled 'From Bureaucratic to Network Organisation - Organisational Change and the Outcomes at Team Aer Lingus'. Siobhan Tiernan holds an MSc in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management, from the London School of Economics, and a primary degree in Business and Political Science from Trinity College Dublin. Siobhan was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2004 and spent a year as Visiting Professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona, Florida, USA. She was awarded an EU Lotus Staff Mobility Scholarship in 2017 to undertake teaching and research in Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Vietnam. Siobhan is principal author of the leading undergraduate management textbook in Ireland. Candace White Dr Candace White is an interior design professional who blogs about design history. Her Master’s thesis (MA Design History and Material Culture, NCAD) was about the old central terminal building (2008) and her PhD (2018) continued to explore Irish modernist architecture in relation to leisure and travel and the social experience and significance of it. In 2020 she contributed an article on Mosney to Architecture Ireland on the same theme. A forthcoming book on Irish flappers and the jazz age (Manchester University Press, 2026) includes her chapter which focuses on the influence of women as consumers on 1930s leisure architecture. The symposium and the exhibition have both emerged from research conducted with the financial support of Taighde Éireann - Research Ireland, grant number [NF/2025/12893], under its New Foundations programme. The symposium is additionally supported with funding from the Royal Irish Academy. Image copyright: John Hinde Archive