This year Ireland reflects on the significance and legacy of the 1916 Easter Rising, a defining week in Ireland’s history. The uprising and its aftermath utterly changed the Irish political landscape and launched a popular movement which led to Irish independence.

Within the wider European and global context of the First World War, some considered Britain’s difficulty to be Ireland’s opportunity. This lead to cooperation between the organisers of the Rising and Germany from 1914 onwards. As well as promises of material support for Irish rebels, Irish prisoners of war in Germany were invited to join an Irish brigade, organised by Roger Casement, which was intended to fight for Irish freedom.

As part of Ireland’s 2016 Official Centenary Programme, the Embassy of Ireland is delighted to welcome leading historians Professor Mary E. Daly (Royal Irish Academy), Dr William Mulligan (UCD), Dr Conor Mulvagh (UCD) and Dr Mark Jones (FU Berlin & UCD) to the Mendelssohn Remise for a panel discussion on Irish-German relations during the First World War, situating them also within their wider historical and global context. The discussion will be followed by a reception at the Embassy of Ireland.

Professor Mary Elizabeth Daly: “Ireland, Irish-America and Germany, 1916-21”. Professor Daly is President of the Royal Irish Academy and is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Dublin (UCD); she has also held visiting positions at Harvard and Boston College. Over the course of her distinguished career, Professor Daly has researched widely and published prolifically, notably: Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 1860-1914 (1984); Women and Work in Ireland (1997); The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973 (2006); and, with Theo Hoppen, Gladstone: Ireland and Beyond (2011).

Dr William Mulligan: “Ireland in Germany’s world revolution”. Dr Mulligan is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at University College Dublin (UCD). After receiving his PhD from the University of Cambridge, he has taught in Dublin and Glasgow and has held visiting fellowships at the Institutes of Advanced Research in Berlin and Princeton. He has written widely on the First World War and his most recent book is The Great War for Peace (Yale UP, 2014).

Dr Conor Mulvagh: “Roger Casement's Irish Brigade: an Irish-German encounter during the First World War”. Dr Mulvagh is Lecturer in Irish History at University College Dublin (UCD) with special responsibility for commemorations. He is currently researching the history of UCD during the Irish Revolution. He lectures on memory and commemoration as well as on nineteenth and twentieth century Irish and British history. His most recent book, The Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, 1900-18 will be published with Manchester University Press later this year.

Dr Mark Jones: Moderator. Dr Jones is an Irish Research Council Marie Curie Fellow (Elevate Fellow) at University College Dublin & at Berlin's Freie Universität. His first book Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918-19 will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year. He is also the convenor of the Globalising the History of Revolutions conference series, a series of international workshops that set out to place the history of revolutions in their broader transnational contexts.