In this episode of the podcast, Jenny chats to Dr Renée Hulan, a Professor of English Language and Literature at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. She was the Craig Dobbin Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at University College Dublin in 2020-2021 and has written several books that bring together her interests in climate fiction, Canadian heritage and indigenous communities. She has also edited collections on these themes and recently gave a fascinating online lecture at South East...

In this episode of the podcast, Jenny speaks to Jim Nolan and Michael Power who have just finished their sold-out run of Jim’s new play Castel Gandolfo at Garter Lane Arts Centre in Waterford. The play revolves around a family whose long-buried secret threatens to unsettle the delicate balance they have established. The production also featured IFTA-nominated Carrie Crowley in the role of the returning mother-figure, Dolly, and a cast from the Four Rivers company which aims to bring new and...

This episode of the podcast is dedicated to first year students and how they can get the most out of this next chapter of their lives. For most, it is both an exciting and overwhelming time when students must learn how to navigate a new level of independence and cope with new academic, financial and social responsibilities. In studio are Conor Phelan, of SETU’s Student Life and Learning Office, Erin McNamara-Cullen, the course leader for the BA Arts programme at SETU and Corey Shanahan, the...

This episode of the podcast features the collaborative team of lecturers and students who are working on the project “Diversifying the Curriculum”. The project is funded by N-TUTORR, and aims to decolonise and diversify the third-year English module, The Literature of Family. The team presented at the recent national N-TUTORR showcase in Dublin and aims to change the teaching, learning and assessment focus of the module. Also in studio is the SETU N-TUTORR co-ordinator for Student...

This is a very important and special episode of the podcast, in which Fadi Zmorrod, the recipient of the SEVN (South East Venue Network) bursary joins Jenny in studio to talk about his work with Doulab Circus and Dance. When Fadi was younger, he left the oppressive environment of occupied Palestine and went to study computing in the United States. Yet his heart was simply not in it: he was drawn back to the arts and to his home, where he met his Irish wife, Juliet, and where Doulab Circus and...

As policies on EDI are rolled out in higher education institutes, increased efforts are being made to diversify and decolonise a wide range of curricula across the sector. With thanks to SATLE funding (Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement) from the National Forum, Dr Ebun Joseph joined us at SETU for two seminars (one with students and another with staff) on understanding racial diversity and talking about race in the classroom. In this episode of the podcast, Jenny...

This episode sees us welcome our very first spoken word poet to the podcast! Caoimhe Weakliam joined us to chat about the power of spoken word poetry after a talk with English students that was funded by the Strategic Alignment for Teaching and Learning Enhancement initiative from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In the past year, Caoimhe has performed as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival and Culture Night and has delivered two sets at...

This episode sees us welcome our very first spoken word poet to the podcast! Caoimhe Weakliam joined us to chat about the power of spoken word poetry after a talk with English students that was funded by the Strategic Alignment for Teaching and Learning Enhancement initiative from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In the past year, Caoimhe has performed as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival and Culture Night and has delivered two sets at...

This first episode of 2024 for The Nerve features Daniel Mulhall, former Irish ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States, who recently received an honorary doctorate from SETU. Born and raised in Waterford, Daniel’s diplomacy work has taken him all over the world, and in the podcast, he highlights how literature has played an important role in his job. He also discusses the process of writing a book on Ulysses during the pandemic, his various academic roles at NYU, Cambridge and...

Ho, ho, ho, and happy Christmas! In this festive episode of the podcast, Jenny is joined by Aoife Hearne, dietician and lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences (and previous contributor to TV’s Operation Transformation), Dr John McNamara who lectures in Social Care, Social Science, and Sociology in the Departments of Social Care and Early Childhood, and the Department of Arts, and Dr David Scanlon, lecturer in Biology & Biopharmaceutical Science. Their Christmas recommendations...

Joining Dr Jenny O’Connor in studio for this episode is the award-winning Canadian author Alexander MacLeod. A Professor of Creative Writing at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Alexander has been published in the prestigious New Yorker and Granta magazines and has won the Atlantic Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the O.Henry Award. His first collection Light Lifting was published in 2010 and his latest, Animal Person, was released in 2022. Both...

This episode of the podcast features a discussion with the facilitator of this semester’s English and Theatre Studies Day, Martin Tyrrell. Martin is the author of the forthcoming George Orwell: from Class War to Cold War and a contributing editor for the academic journal George Orwell Studies. His highly entertaining lecture on Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Orwell’s essays offered context and commentary on the social, political and personal influences in George Orwell’s work. After...

In this episode, members of Waterford’s newest theatrical company, Shakespeare Squared, join Jenny in the studio to talk about the genesis of the organisation and their recent production of Twelfth Night, an open air promenade piece that used the backdrop of Waterford’s Viking Triangle to bring their interpretation to life. Along with theatre professional Eimear Cheasty, co-directors Joe Meagher and Deirdre Dwyer won the maximum available funding from the Arts Council’s Theatre Project Awards...

In this first episode of a new season of the podcast, Dr Jenny O’Connor is joined by Pete Windle, the Head of the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning at SETU, and Dr Kate McCarthy, researcher and lecturer in Theatre Studies to discuss the way generative artificial intelligence (GenAI, e.g. Chat GPT) has affected the teaching of subjects that traditionally relied on the essay (or other text-based methods) for assessing students. The discussion includes philosophical questions about...

Andy Kelly is a nationally recognised archivist and collector of photography and film in Waterford and in this episode, he discusses the collection he has amassed, his time as a projectionist and filmmaker, and the innovative methods he employed when faced with technical challenges over the years (like building cranes and setting fire to a specially built thatched cottage for a movie set piece!). Frank Ryan is a long-time member of Waterford Film For All and recalls the venues, films and...

Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and graduated in 2019 with an MA in Creative Writing from UCC. She has been published in The Irish Times, Banshee, The Stinging Fly and Poetry Ireland Review and her first poetry collection, Raised among vultures, is now available from The Gallery Press. The collection’s unflinching style deals with the complexities of modern living, the realities of dealing with an eating disorder and the intricacies of family dynamics. During the podcast,...

Frank Bosman of the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology in The Netherlands visited SETU in March 2023 to deliver a lecture as part of the Theology in the Public Square series on the connection between culture, theology and religion in three recent TV series. Each of the shows (Squid Game, Jaguar and The Good Place) explores theological themes such as morality, theodicy, truth and hope, and in this episode, he discusses the importance of popular culture in considering such issues in the...

StoryCenter has worked with nearly a thousand organisations around the world and trained more than fifteen thousand people in hundreds of workshops to share stories from their lives. Through its wide-ranging work, it has transformed the way that community activists, educators, health and human services agencies, business professionals, and artists think about the power of the personal voice in creating change. The co-founder of the organisation, Joe Lambert, started out with a degree in...

In this first episode of the new semester, Jenny welcomes Deirdre Grant, a dance practitioner and choreographer who also works as a lecturer at SETU Waterford, teaching on courses as diverse as Theatre Studies, Early Childhood Studies, and Social Care. She is also the current Dance Artist in Residence at Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford. During Covid, when her work with community groups and regional artists could no longer take place, the idea for a book about how to reconnect with the body...

This episode of the podcast features award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster Aingeala Flannery, whose debut novel The Amusements has won high praise from the national press, and from authors such as Anne Enright, Donal Ryan and Marian Keyes. Set in Tramore, Co. Waterford, the story revolves around Helen Grant, who dreams of escaping the seaside town and running away to art college, and follows her family and neighbours over three decades. During the course of the conversation,...

On Tuesday 25thOctober, poet and essayist William Keohane visited SETU to perform ‘Boxing Day,’ a 52-poem sequence that offers one poem for each week of the year. Each one offers a fragmentary glimpse into the experience of gender transition and taken together, the 52 poems present a narrative account of a year of change, apprehension, and grief. The event was organised by English lecturer Dr Christa de Brún and funded by the EDI office at SETU Waterford. In this episode of the podcast,...

In this episode of the podcast, Jenny talks to the facilitators of this semester’s English and Theatre Studies Day, Dalal Sayed and Lani O’Hanlon, as well as Sinead O’Higgins of Waterford Libraries. Dalal’s recent memoir Escape from War to Live in Peace tells of her family’s experience of fleeing from Syria and settling in Cappoquin, Waterford and Lani has recently won the Trócaire Ireland Poetry Competition with her poem, “When I visit Dalal” about their relationship. Sinead was instrumental...

In this episode of the podcast, we check in with third year English and Theatre Studies students Dawn Murray and Naja Klemme, who discuss what they have gained from taking part in extra-curricular activities at SETU. They discuss how they got to know one another via online bingo sessions organised by the Students’ Union during Covid, how important it is to connect with lecturers and guest speakers at organised events, and what it’s like to work with performance artists and theatre...

In this special, fifth anniversary episode of The Nerve, author Aislinn O’Loughlin discusses writing in the Young Adult genre in advance of the release of her new book, Big Bad Me. The novel tells the story of Evie and her sister Kate, who encounter a litany of suspicious murders in the wake of Evie’s revelation that she is a werewolf. A novel about identity, difference, family and love, it relies on vibrant and sparky characters along with witty dialogue to engage its readers. Aislinn talks...