Extract

Above all, we want to thank our contributors, not only for their essays but also for their initial presentations at the first international conference of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, “Exploring the Utopian Impulse,” held 10 to 12 March 2005 at the University of Limerick.

We also thank all those who helped to organize and produce the conference, especially Carmen Kuhling, David Lilburn, Marie Kirwan, Claire Ryan. And we are grateful to our funding sources: the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences; the Research Office, College of Humanities (COH), and Departments of Languages and Cultural Studies and of Sociology at the University of Limerick (UL); the Queens University Belfast, Institute for Irish Studies; and Loretta Brennan Glucksman and the late Lewis Glucksman.

For their ongoing support, we thank our colleagues at UL: especially, Vice President for Research, Vincent Cunnane; College of Humanities Dean, Pat O’Connor; former COH Dean of Research, Eugene O’Brien; former Department of Languages and Cultural Studies Head, Martin Chappell, and his successor, Jean Conacher; our Ralahine Centre fellow travelers (Joachim Fischer, Associate Director; Luke Ashworth; Liam Bannon; Bríona Nic Dhiarmada; Michael G. Kelly; Carmen Kuhling; Patricia Lynch; Serge Rivière; Tina O’Toole; Geraldine Sheridan; Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin); and our co-workers in the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies.

We are particularly grateful to the people who worked with us in producing this volume – the second in the Ralahine Utopian Studies book series: our...