About Century Ireland
The Century Ireland project was an online historical newspaper that told the story of the events of Irish life throughout the period covered by the Irish Decade of Centenaries, which ran from 2012 to 2023.
Published fortnightly from May 2013, the project concluded at the end of October 2023. In the interim, 268 individual editions were published alongside a series of thematic exhibitions. More particularly, Century Ireland published thousands of articles and hundreds of film and audio items, its historical news reporting on life in Ireland a hundred years previously supported by a wealth of visual, archival and contextual material that aimed at facilitating a deeper understanding of the complexities of Irish life in the years between 1912 and 1923.
Funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht,
Sport and Media, Century Ireland was produced by a team of
researchers at Boston College-Ireland and hosted by our media
partner, RTÉ.
At the core of the project was a collaborative partnership
between the major cultural and educational institutions in
Ireland and we are grateful to them all for helping make it
possible to sustain a public history enterprise of such scale
over the course of more than a decade. We are also grateful to
the many leading scholars and writers who have generously
contributed to this website and their many and varied
perspectives on this period of the Irish past will continue to
be freely accessible on the RTÉ platform into the
future.
Above all else, we are grateful to all those across the island of Ireland and beyond - our audience was global - who engaged with Century Ireland online and at our many public events.
Century Ireland was awarded an Eircom Spider award for best Irish Arts, Culture & Heritage website in 2013 and shortlisted for a prestigious Prix Europa, one of the biggest international prizes for public service television, radio and online production.
In 2015 Century Ireland's online Gallipoli Exhibition earned the project another eir Spider award – this time for Best in News, Publishing and Entertainment - as well as a Realex Payments Web Award for Best Arts and Culture Website. The following year, Century Ireland was chosen by popular vote as one of the websites that best remembered the events of 1916. The ‘Remember 1916 Recording 2016' project was run by the National Library of Ireland and aimed to identify the five websites that best reflected Ireland 100 years ago and five that record the Ireland of today.
While the Century Ireland has now ended, this certificate still
hangs proudly on the wall of the project’s former offices
at Boston College-Ireland.
Any queries in relation to Century Ireland should be directed to
michael.cronin.3@bc.edu
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The Century Ireland team comprises:
Professor Mike Cronin (Project Director)
Mark Duncan (Project Director & Content Editor)
Professor Paul Rouse (Project Director)
Ellen King (Research and Production)
Ben Shorten (Research and Production)
Ed Mulhall (Editorial Advisor)
Catríona Crowe (Archival Advisor)
RTÉ
National Library of Ireland
National Archives
National Museum of Ireland
National Gallery of Ireland
Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane
Dublin City Library and Archives
University College Dublin
NUI Galway
Dictionary of Irish Biography
IFI Irish Film Archive
Villanova University
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Century Ireland can be contacted via:
Post: Century Ireland, 42 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.
Twitter:
@CenturyIRL
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/CenturyIreland
Launch
Century Ireland was formally launched on 7 May 2013 at Government
buildings by then Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht,
Jimmy Deenihan. View here the RTÉ Six-One and Nine
O’Clock
news coverage
of the event.
Listen to former Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan and Prof. Mike Cronin of Boston College discuss the launch of Century Ireland on Today with Pat Kenny, RTE Radio 1, 7 May 2013.
On the 12 May 2013, the launch of the Century Ireland was the subject of a special edition of The History Show on RTÉ Radio 1. Listen as the project’s directors - Prof Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Dr. Paul Rouse – and Catríona Crowe of the National Archives discuss the project and provide a flavour of what was going on in Ireland in the Spring of 1913 - emigration, suffragist movement, politics, shopping, weather, poverty in Connemara, court reports, sport.