AMERICAN IRISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TO SPEAK AT 3RD ANNUAL MURPHY/HEALY LECTURE
(Providence, RI) – American Irish Historical Society Executive Director Dr. Elizabeth Stack will be the featured speaker at Providence College’s Third Annual Murphy/Healy Lecture in Irish Culture. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Friday, March 1 at 6:00 p.m. in ’64 Hall on the Providence College campus. Free parking is available in the College’s Wardlaw Ave. lot, adjacent to Slavin Center, where ’64 Hall is located.
Dr. Stack’s topic will be “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears: Ireland’s Immigration Story.” In this lecture, Dr. Stack will trace the changing patterns of emigration and how the diaspora has adapted to life in America. She will also look at how Ireland has coped with the exodus of her people, and how for the first time in her history, Ireland has recently received more people than have left.
Dr. Stack was previously the executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, NY and before that she taught Irish and Irish American History and was an Associate Director at Fordham University’s Institute of Irish Studies. She completed her Ph.D. at Fordham, writing about Irish and German immigrants in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, as they grappled with the immigration restriction movements of that time. She has a master’s degree in Anglo-Irish Relations in the 20th Century from University College Dublin in Ireland.
Originally from Listowel, in Co. Kerry, Dr. Stack sees a huge connection between her own experience as an immigrant, and the important mission of the Society to preserve and share Irish contributions to American history.
The Murphy/Healy Lecture in Irish Culture series was founded in 2020 with an endowment gift from John M. Murphy, Sr. ’19. The lecture aims to bring together students, faculty, staff, and the broader Rhode Island community in a greater understanding of Irish history.
Founded in 1917, Providence College is the only college or university in the United States administered by the Dominican Friars. The Catholic, liberal arts college has an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 4,100 students and offers degrees in 56 academic majors. Since 1997, Providence College consistently has been ranked among the top five regional universities in the North according to U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges.”
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