Romanian Cultural Institute holds conference on writings of cardinal John Henry Newman

The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) will mark the Irish Presidency of the European Union with a conference on the writings of cardinal John Henry Newman, held within the framework of the Irish Romanian partnership, an agreement signed between ICR and the Irish Embassy in Bucharest. The event will take place Thursday, February 21st 2013, 6 pm, at the Department of Political Science, Negulescu Hall (Str. Spiru Haret nr. 8).

The special guests are Dr. Stephen Kelly, with a talk on “A Sympathetic Realist: John Henry Newman and Irish Nationalism” and Dr. Andrew Pierce, with a talk on “Newman and the Idea of Equlibrium”. The presentations and the discussions and are to be held in English. Access is free but limited by the number of seats.

His Excellency Mr. Oliver Grogan, Irish Ambassador in Bucharest, Andrei Marga, Prof. PhD President of Romanian Cultural Institute, and Mrs. Lecturer Claudia Maria Udrescu, Dean of Faculty of Political Science, will host the event.

About the speakers

Dr. Stephen Kelly is a postdoctoral teaching Fellow with the Department of politics, History, Communications and Media, Liverpool Hope University and a part-time lecturer with the School of History and Archive, University College Dublin. Throughout his academic career he was the recipient of numerous honors and prizes, many of them related to the work of Cardinal John Henry Newman. He teaches modules on varieties of nationalism in modern Europe, as well as on the Anglo-Irish relations in the last 200 years. He has authored several articles and book chapters on these topics; he is also the author of the monographs “A conservative heart? The political thought of John Henry Newman” (Columba Press, Dublin 2012) and “Fianna Fáil, partition and Northern Ireland, 1926-1971” (Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 2013)

Dr. Andrew Pierce is Assistant Professor in Ecumenics at the IrishSchool of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. His research interests centre on the connections between theological modernism and religious anti-modernism. A frequent commentator on ecumenical affairs, his recent publications include chapters in Karl Rahner: Theologian for the Twenty-First Century (Padraic Conway and Fainche Ryan, Eds; 2010) and George Tyrrell and Catholic Modernism (Oliver P Rafferty, SJ, Ed; 2010), as well as articles in The Furrow, Search, Doctrine & Life, Milltown Studies, Concilium, One in Christ and Oekumenische Rundschau. In 2008-09, Dr Pierce was a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellow, and spent part of this time as a Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Newman Studies at UCD, where he delivered the 2009 Newman Lecture. He serves as a member of the International Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) and was the President of Societas Oecumenica, the European Association for Ecumenical Research between 2010 and 2012.