2021 Festival – Episode 13.
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Across the island of Ireland, much work has been done to collect and share the stories of LGBTQ+ lives. This panel brings together practitioners who have worked on LGBTQ+ in public history to discuss their work – from grassroots projects to archives and museums.
Sara Phillips (Chair)
Sara R Phillips is a Trans activist working globally. She has been involved with trans activism for over 25 years. She is currently in her 9th year as Chair of the Board of Directors of Irelands national trans organisation, Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI). She is the founder, researcher and archivist of the Irish Trans Archive.
Sara was one of the lead negotiators to the Gender Recognition Act 2015 and served on the Governmental review of the act in 2018.
Sara was honoured as Dublin LGBTQ Pride Grand Marshall in 2018. Sara is also a board member of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, the Treasurer of both the International Trans Fund in New York and Transgender Europe in Berlin.
Richard O’Leary
Dr Richard O’Leary is a Visiting Scholar in History at Queen’s University Belfast and a professional storyteller. He was the Coordinator of the Northern Ireland LGBT Heritage Project until May 2021. Richard has decades of experience as a gay activist and as an academic but in recent years he has focused on sharing stories of LGBTQ+ history through live oral performance storytelling. His latest solo show, commissioned by the Outburst Queer Arts Festival, is due to open at the MAC theatre, Belfast in mid November 2021 and is provisionally titled ‘My Queer History of Northern Ireland’.
Maurice J Casey
Dr Maurice J Casey is the Historian in Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. He is the curator of Out in the World: Ireland’s LGBTQ+ Diaspora, an exhibition running until December 2021 at EPIC in the CHQ building. He completed his PhD in History at the University of Oxford in 2020.
Kate Drinane
Kate Drinane has been part of the Education Team at the National Gallery of Ireland for eight years. She has introduced and developed LGBTQIA+ programming at the Gallery, including the management of OUTing the Past: Festival of LGBT History in Dublin 2019. Kate is the co-founder of the Queer Culture Ireland.
The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company.
