The Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens (IIHSA) is preparing for its spring study tours, which will involve groups from UCC, UCG and St Patrick's College, Maynooth, as well as UCD and TCD.
The UCD and Trinity students will leave for Greece on March 11th, the Cork, Galway and Maynooth group on March 29th.
The director of the IIHSA is Dr Pat Cronin of UCC, who was appointed in 1997. Dr Cronin was a co-founder of the institute together with, among others, Prof Andrew Smith of UCD's department of classics and Prof George Huxley, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, who donated almost all of the classical books to the library of the IIHSA.
The institute's broad aims, according to Dr Cronin, are to serve as a distinctly Irish medium in Athens through which the study of Greece and its culture by Irish scholars may flourish, to promote cultural interaction between Greece and Ireland, to promote the study of the great contributions made by Greece and Ireland to Western civilisation, and to develop research programmes in Greece.
The institute, says Dr Cronin, is still in its infancy and is proceeding cautiously as it attempts to build a firm foundation for an Irish academic presence in the Greek capital. Twenty-five years ago another attempt to do so failed, but the signs are that this time the institute will take hold and flourish.
It has been formally approved by the Greek authorities who recently granted the IIHSA its first archaeological permit for a project on the Ionian Island of Kephallonia, the setting for the film, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The project is a synergasia, a co-operative effort by Irish and Greek archaeologists. The Irish director is Dr Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood, of the classics department at UCD.
Another project is the Platonists in Athens, co-ordinated by Prof Smith, and this spring Dr Cronin will co-ordinate a project on the folklore of the farm in Greece and Ireland. The institute is also focusing its efforts on traditional music. Two well-known experts in the field, Dr Tomás Ó Canainn of UCC, and the Munster musician Matt Cranitch have been guest lecturers at the IIHSA.
Dr Cronin will retire from academic life next September, which will afford him time to concentrate on the completion of a major reference work on Greek weather lore. Weather was something which occupied the ancients and which determined the outcome of some ancient battles such as Artemisium when the Persians invaded Greece circa 480BC.
In similar fashion to the Greeks', Irish weather lore developed out of necessity, and there is much common ground between the two traditions, Dr Cronin says.
The headquarters of the institute in Athens has been made possible through the generosity of the McCabe family of New York, lovers of Greece and Ireland, who have given it a home there on a recurring short-term lease basis. But the hope is that in the future, as other nations do, Ireland will have a permanent institute in Greece, staffed by permanent employees.
To date, funding has been through contributions from the five classics departments in the universities of the Republic, membership fees, the Department of Foreign Affairs and private donations.