Clare historian Dr Tomás Mac Conmara has been honoured with a fellowship to the University of Massachusetts.
While Stateside Mac Conmara will present his research into the Irish Revolutionary Period and the Easter Rising. Clare’s oral tradition from the War of Independence along with the 1916 Rising in the County will be discussed as part of a major conference this September.
Tuamgraney native Tomás has been chosen as the Centre for Irish Partnership’s Fellow at the conference. “I believe strongly that unless the memory and oral tradition of local people and places is not central to our research we are presenting an incomplete narrative. I’m delighted that the University of Massachusetts have taken an interest in that research”.
Mac Conmara is the founder of Cuimhneamh an Chláir, the Clare Oral History and Folklore Group, and has been engaged in the preservation of Clare’s cultural heritage for many years. He was project manager on Ireland’s first countywide studies of antique farm machinery and traditional boats and also established a framework for the collections of fieldnames on behalf of the Clare Placenames committee in 2008.
He is currently in the process of publishing a major study into the War of Independence in Clare.