Centre for Irish studies opens at Flensburg university in Germany

Ireland has another cultural foothold on the European continent with a new centre for Irish studies at the Europa University (EUF) in the northern German city of Flensburg.

The new centre fits into Ireland’s post-Brexit plan to widen and deepen its footprint in Germany, and will be headed by James Joyce scholar Michelle Witen, a junior professor for English and Irish literature in Flensburg.

She told an audience at the opening ceremony that the new centre, based in the university’s interdisciplinary centre for European studies, will boost research in the area, hold seminars and conferences on Ireland, Irish-German relations and aspects of the Irish diaspora worldwide.

Her hope is to help fan the flames of Irish studies across Germany which, after dwindling decades, have begun to rise again in recent years.

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“Brexit has changed the political position of Ireland and Northern Ireland within the EU, and Ireland will gain in importance in the European context,” said Prof Witen, a native of Canada who comes to Flensburg via Oxford and the University of Basel.

As a cultural and outreach centre plans include film nights, a summer school and a Finnegans Wake reading circle for university students, staff and the wider community. Next year it will help co-ordinate in Flensburg the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, last held in Germany in 1981.

For Prof Witen a priority for the centre is to update German ideas about Ireland and move beyond the traditional focus on 20th century literary giants. One of its first guests next year will be Northern Ireland writer Jan Carson.

“Ireland as it was in the 1920s is really important to acknowledge, and we will nod to the fact that there is a rich literary tradition while moving beyond it,” said Prof Witen.

In Flensburg, Prof Ulrich Glassmann, vice-president for European and international affairs at the university, said the new centre “fits perfectly into the internationalisation strategy” and, with UL, would seek additional funding from the European University Alliance programme.

The new centre for Irish studies is funded by Europa Flensburg University, with additional applications in progress for EU funding. Ireland will provide project-based funding.

Irish Ambassador to Germany, Nicholas O’Brien, said Michelle Witen’s efforts to establish the centre in Flensburg had been “inspiring” and an important moment of reversing the decline of Irish studies at European universities.

“The establishment of an Irish studies programme at the University of Würzburg in 2021 and now in Flensburg means that Irish studies is truly spreading throughout Germany,” he said, noting Ireland-focused English departments also in Wuppertal, Leipzig, Tübingen and Dortmund.