About
Wednesday 25th June
9.00 - 11.00am Conference Registration.
9.30 Walking Tour of Flann O’Brien’s Strabane Scripted by Michael Kennedy, Strabane History Society and led by Alley Theatre Team. Meet at Alley Theatre at 9.20.
11.00 - 12.00pm Lunch and Official Welcome Launch of Abhainn Burn River, a tri-lingual (English, Irish and Ulster Scots) book featuring creative writing by local students in collaboration with Dubhán Ó Longáin and Alan Millar.
12.00 - 1.30pm Panel I: Old and New Chair: Harun Šiljak 1. Eoin McGloin: ‘neither work nor monotony’- Lethargy as Transcendence in Myles na gCopaleen’s An Béal Bocht 2. Dominic Harkin: ‘We plan the world of the future’: Autodidacticism and the Science of Self-help in O’Brien’s late novels 3. Joseph LaBine: European Modernism or “the Celtic Way”: Revisiting Niall Montgomery and Brian O’Nolan’s Stances on Poetry
1.30 - 2.00pm Tea/Coffee
2.00 - 3.30pm Panel II: Science and Health Chair: Alana Gillespie 1. José Lanters: R.M. Smyllie, Erwin Schroedinger, and the Sin of Pride in The Third Policeman 2. Maebh Long: ‘a waif and sick children’: Illness and Editing in Cruiskeen Lawn 3. Joe Brooker: Home and Flann O’Brien
3.30 - 4.00pm Tea/Coffee
4.00 - 5.30pm Panel III: Technology and Media Chair: Brian Ó Conhcubhair 1. Maebh Murphy: Writing the Gramophone as a Tool of Extraction in An Béal Bocht 2. Harun Šiljak: The Third Policeman in the 41st Precinct: Flann O’Brien and Disco Elysium 3. Catherine Flynn: His Master’s Voice: Authority and Broadcasting
6.00pm Keynote Address: Emily Ridge Dul Siar, Dul Siar: The Ever-Receding West in An Béal Bocht Chair: Maebh Long
7.30pm Official Opening Civic Reception and Strabane Brass Band, CRAIC and Rusty Strings
Thursday 26th June
9.00 - 10.30am Panel IV: Huxley Chair: Brian Ó Conhcubhair 1. Joseph LaBine: Newspaperist Novelists: Aldous Huxley and Brian O’Nolan 2. Bryan Counter: Untaming the World: Dialogue and the Work of Art in Point Counter Point 3. Harun Šiljak: Not so strange new worlds: difference and repetition in Huxley and O’Nolan
10.30 - 11.00am Tea/Coffee
11.00 - 12.00pm Keynote Address: Tobias Harris Ag Fuineadh Ama: Opening Closed Ground in the Works of Brian Ó Nualláin Chair: Maebh Long
12.00 - 1.00pm Lunch
12.30pm Film Screening Chair: Marianne O'Kane Boal David O'Kane, “Babble,” (2008), a filmed performance combining the work of O'Nolan, Kafka and Borges, running time 30 mins. Eamon O'Kane, “Re-enactment,” (2009), film of King James II visit to Cavanacor at the time of the Siege of Derry in 1689, running time 15 mins, also inspired by Brian O'Nolan short story from 1942 'Footnote to the Battle of the Boyne'
1.00 - 2.30pm Panel V: Strabane & Donegal Chair: José Lanters 1. Marianne O’Kane Boal: Ag Tabhairt Aghaidh ar an Macasamhail (Confronting the Double) - Creative interpretations of Brian O’Nolan’s Strabane and its Surroundings 2. Séamas Mac Annaidh: “Barney Maglone” as a precursor of “Myles na Gopaleen” 3. Brian Ó Conchubhair: Numbers and dates: Odd and Even
2.30 - 3.00pm Tea/Coffee
3.00 - 4.30pm Panel VI: At Swim (in Transit) Chair: Maebh Long 1. James Bacon: Flann, on the Tram: At Swim-Two-Birds and Dublin’s Lost Tramways 2. Chih-hsien Hsieh: What Was Sweeny Doing on the Tree?—On the Simplified Chinese Translation of At Swim-TwoBirds 3. Jeaic Mag Fhinn: At Swim-Two-Birds as Gaeilge
4.30 - 4.45pm Break
4.45 - 6.15pm Panel VII: Social Contexts & Formative Communities Chair: Brian Ó Conchubhair 1. Robin Hull: The Life and Intellectual Development of Mr. Huxley 2. Myles Schaller: Trolling Academia 2. Rosemary Jenkinson: Flann and Social Media
7.00pm Book & Art Launch. Launch of Flann O’Brien and the European Avant-Garde, 1934–45 by Tobias Harris (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). Launch of Terminal 1: Arrivals by Niall Montgomery, edited by Joseph LaBine. Launch of ' Strange Enlightenments' responses to the work of Brian O'Nolan, featuring artwork by Eddie O'Kane, Joanna O'Kane, Eamon O'Kane, Matthew O'Kane and David O'Kane Micheál Ó Nualláin Art Exhibit by Anna Uí Nualláin
Friday 27th June
9.00 - 10.30am Panel VII: Remapping Estranged Spaces Chair: Brian Ó Conchubhair 1. Liam Campbell & Paddy Fitzgerald: Exploring the Migrant in Flann O’Brien 2. Mikelyn Rochford: Spatialization and Disorientation in the Afterlives of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Graveyard Clay 3. Alana Gillespie: The “fresh forgetting of the unremembered”: Haunting, the Uncanny and the Malleable Past in Cruiskeen Lawn and The Third Policeman
10.30 - 11.00am Tea/Coffee
11.00 - 12.30pm Panel IX: Sources and Forebears Chair: Marianne O'Kane Boal 1. Brian Lambkin: Flann O’Brien and the “Culdees” 2. Pádraig Ó Méalóid: What’s in a name? Trellis? Tressell?
12.30 - 1.30pm Lunch
1.00pm Film Screening Chair: Marianne O'Kane Boal David O'Kane, “Babble,” (2008) & Eamon O'Kane, “Re-enactment,” (2009)
1.30 - 2.30pm Keynote Address: Michael Pierse False alternatives and grim absurdities: Brendan Behan, Flann O'Brien and the satire of independent Ireland Chair: Brian Ó Conchubhair
2.30 - 3.00pm Tea/Coffee
3.00 - 4.00pm Panel X: Individual Stories Chair: Harun Šiljak 1. Tess Finnegan Burchmore: “Leading a double life”: Namelessness, Madness, and nonplus’s Resident Medical Officer 2. Elliott Mills: I open up my home to the anonymous other: Accepting and Resisting Textual Hospitality in Brian O’Nolan’s Early Writings
7.30pm Conference Banquet Oysters Restaurant, 37 Patrick Street, Strabane, BT82 8DQ Presentation of 2025 International Flann O’Brien Society Awards
