Madam, - We wish to protest in the strongest possible way at the decision of NUI Galway to close down its women's studies centre. Despite university management's claim (Prof Kevin Barry, Letters, March 8th) that the women's studies centre is being merely relocated, the "new affiliation" with the department of political science and sociology means the centre would lose its independent and interdisciplinary status and its wide range of community outreach activities would be jeopardised. The wider impact of this decision will be to further undermine the status of women in our society generally by adding to their invisibility and by cutting off the potential for the centre to be a resource for women in the broader community.
The interdisciplinarity of women's studies at NUI Galway, which has always consciously embraced both the humanities and the social sciences, is being expressly violated in this restructuring and fails to comply with models of best practice nationally and internationally. How can the broad and inclusive interdisciplinary ethos of women's studies be preserved if all the academic posts are to be held by social scientists?
Contrary to management claims that the decision to "relocate" women's studies was taken after extensive consultation, the decision to close the centre and subsume women's studies into another discipline was taken in April 2006, without consultation with women's studies staff, the board of the women's studies centre, or the arts faculty. This occurred despite a key recommendation of a review of the women's studies centre, completed in March 2006, and carried out by senior academics from both inside and outside NUI Galway, that women's studies should retain its organisational structure as a centre with a director and an advisory board.
We call on the university management team and the governing authority of NUI Galway to refer this matter back to the arts faculty for appropriate consideration. We urge the resolution of this conflict by the acceptance of women's studies as a discrete academic discipline, allowing the women's studies centre to continue as an academic unit in its own right. - Yours, etc,
JOSEPHINE BOLAND, (Department of Education); PAT BYRNE, (Information Technology); Dr SIUBHÁN COMER, (Department of Geography); URSULA CONNOLLY, (Department of Law); Dr JOHN CUNNINGHAM, Dr ENRICO DAL LAGO, Dr RÓISÍN HEALY, Dr Kim LoPRETE, (Department of History); Prof TADHG FOLEY, Dr CATHERINE LA FARGE, Dr SINÉAD MOONEY, Dr LIONEL PILKINGTON, (Department of English); MICHAEL D. HIGGINS, (Adjunct Professor, Irish Centre for Human Rights); ANN LYONS, (Women's Studies Centre); MAUREEN MALONEY, (Department of Management); Dr TERRENCE MCDONOUGH, (Department of Economics); Dr JOHN MORRISSEY, Prof ULF STROHMAYER, (Department of Geography); SINÉAD NÍ FHAOLÁIN, (Former member of Women's Studies Centre Board of Management); Dr KIERAN O'CONOR, MAGGIE RONAYNE, (Department of Archaeology); Dr LILLIS O'LAOIRE, (Scoil na Gaeilge); ROSALEEN O'NEILL, (Department of German); Dr. LOUIS DE PAOR, (Centre for Irish Studies); SHIVAUN QUINLIVAN, (Department of Law); Prof ANGELA SAVAGE, (Department of Chemistry); Dr MICHELINE SHEEHY-SKEFFINGTON, (Department of Botany); Dr TONY VARLEY (Department of Political Science and Sociology); National University of Ireland, Galway