A renewed meeting of minds

Like long-lost cousins, Irish and Scottish academics are rediscovering one another through participation in a series of ambitious inter-university initiatives that mirror the reshaping of the political relationships underpinning the Irish peace process and devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Both Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin are to the fore in these pioneering developments.

The most high-profile is the official inauguration, appropriately on St Andrew's Day, by the President, Mrs McAleese, of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen under the directorship of Professor T. M. Devine, the author of The Scottish Nation, 1700-2000.

This is not Devine's - nor Aberdeen's - first foray into the fast-expanding area of Irish-Scottish studies. Devine and Aberdeen were founder members of the Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative (ISAI) which was launched in 1995 along with Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Strathclyde.

This initiated shared study programmes emphasising common interests in language, literature and history. Last month it expanded to include Queen's University of Belfast.

ASAI's six aims are:

to pool the resources of staff expertise in the four participating universities,

to promote academic exchanges,

to sponsor joint research projects,

to improve facilities for research students,

to encourage "east-west" contacts among students, and

to hold public lectures, seminars and cultural events aiming to communicate the latest scholarship findings to a wider public in Ireland and Scotland.

Under the ASAI umbrella, Trinity College, Dublin, has been awarded a grant of £366,000 from the Higher Education Authority over three years to sponsor a number of research projects on Ireland and Scotland.

In response to Aberdeen University's challenge to its leadership within the Scottish academic world, Edinburgh University has turned to University College, Dublin, for its counter-initiative by establishing the Institute for British-Irish Studies. A coup for UCD was the request by the First Minister for Scotland, Donald Dewar, to see the Institute during his recent visit to Dublin. Director John Coakley says that the Institute is an effort by UCD to demonstrate that the academic community has a role to play in tackling fundamental political problems.

"While our focus is on the division between the two main traditions on the island of Ireland we are conscious of intriguing similarities between patterns of political change here and such cases as South Africa and the Middle East. There are also striking similarities between Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Scottish relationships and we are seeking to explore these in co-operation with the University of Edinburgh."

The Institute's administrative structure and a programme of research, seminars, conferences and publications is being put in place by Carmel Coyle, formerly of CEEPA and the National College of Ireland.

In parallel to the Institute, a British-Irish Consortium for Political and Constitutional Research was established at a meeting in Dublin in January composed of scholars from University College Dublin, the University of Edinburgh, Queen's University Belfast and Cardiff University.