The National Museum of Ireland welcomes Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin T.D. announcement today on the appointment of two new members to its board.
Dr. Susan Rogers is a lecturer in furniture design in GMIT Letterfrack with 30 years’ experience in the field of design and education. She has extensive experience in exhibition curation and brings a keen interest and understanding of museums and museum practice.
Dr. Barra O’Donnabháin is a professional archaeologist with over 35 years’ experience. A lecturer in Archaeology in UCC since 1996, he is a prolific publisher of books, peer reviews and other articles in his area of expertise and is currently involved in a research project on Spike Island, Co. Cork.
Commenting on the announcements, the Chair of the Board, Catherine Heaney stated:
On behalf of the National Museum of Ireland, I welcome the Minister’s decision to appoint Susan and Barra to the board of the National Museum of Ireland. These appointments increase the geographical spread and range of expertise on the Museum’s board, and we very much look forward to working with our new colleagues over the coming months.”
Susan Rogers
Susan Rogers is a lecturer in design and education at the National Centre for Excellence in Furniture Design and Technology at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) Letterfrack, Co. Galway.
Before joining GMIT Letterfrack she spent many years teaching the history and theory of design and visual communication at Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT). She studied Visual Communication at NCAD, before completing a Masters degree in Design Education, also at NCAD. She completed a D. Phil in Design Theory at the University of Ulster.
A member of the Institute of Designers in Ireland she has taken a central role on many collaborative projects to promote design in the west of Ireland. Her expertise includes exhibition curation and conference organisation.
She is keenly interested in Irish design, our traditional crafts heritage and its influence on contemporary design practice, as well as Irish language and culture.
Barra O’Donnabháin
Dr. Barra O’Donnabháin is an archaeologist who teaches at University College Cork. His specialism is bioarchaeology, the contextualised analysis of archaeological human remains.
O’Donnabháin has directed and collaborated in archaeological projects in a number of world areas. His recent focus has been on institutional confinement. From 2012 to 2018, he conducted excavations at the 19th century prison at Spike Island in Cork harbour. He is co-editor of the 2018 volume Archaeological Human Remains: Legacies of Imperialism, Communism, and Colonialism published by Springer, New York.
He is a member of the Academic Board of the Los Angeles-based Institute for Field Research.