KEYNOTES

Carolina Amador-Moreno
Dr. Carolina Amador-Moreno’s research focuses on the English spoken in Ireland and includes (historical) sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, stylistics, and corpus linguistics. Her publications include articles and chapters dealing with these topics (see list of publications).y. Her recent work has paid particular attention to the analysis of (historical) sociolinguistic and pragmatic determinants of language variation and change. Other research projects include dealing with mobility, language education, and discourse analysis. She is also working on the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence, a project originally funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Gavin Foster
Dr. Gavin Foster received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame and is Associate Professor of modern Irish history in the School of Irish Studies, with a cross-appointment in History. He is a Core Member of Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling and serves as History Reviews Editor for the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. His research has focused on republican political culture, revolutionary violence, social conflicts, class and social status, labour history, migration, and commemoration/memory themes in the Irish Revolution(1913-23), particularly its final Civil War phase and the early years of the Irish Free State. His book, The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class and Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) was awarded the 2015 James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences by the American Conference for Irish Studies.

Eamonn McKee
Dr. Eamonn McKee became Ambassador of Ireland to Canada in October 2020. He has a degree in history (modern Irish) and economics from UCD and a Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland in 1987. He has worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Anglo-Irish Division, including six years at the Embassy Washington from 1990 to 1996. He has focused on security issues, including Bloody Sunday, contentious parades, policing and confidence in the rule of law, the use of lethal force, the Cory process and criminal justice reform. He was a member of the Irish Government team that negotiated the Good Friday Agreement and was later involved in its implementation on the policing and justice agenda. He has served as Ambassador to Seoul (2009-13) and Israel (2013-2015). Ambassador McKee is known to many for his eloquent and perceptive blogs about Irish culture and history and its connections to the countries to which he has been posted. You can read them at www.eamonncmckee.com
D

Laura McKenna
Dr. Laura McKenna is a writer of fiction and poetry and worked for many years as a child psychiatrist. Her novel Words to Shape My Name was longlisted for the 2019 Bath Novel Award and was a winner at the 2020 Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair. She is the recipient of Tyrone Guthrie, Cork County Council, John Montague Mentorship (Munster Literature Centre) and Arts Council bursaries. Twice nominated for a Hennessy Literary Award and a Forward Prize for poetry, Laura’s work has been published in The RTÉ Guide, Southword, Banshee and New Irish Writing.

Joe Mancinelli
Joseph Mancinelli is the International Vice President and Regional Manager for Central and Eastern Canada of the Laborers' International Union of North America, a US-based labour union representing over 800,000 total members with 160,000 members in the LIUNA Central and Eastern Canadian region.