The Royal Irish Academy/Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann champions research. We identify and recognise Ireland’s world class researchers. We support scholarship and promote awareness of how science and the humanities enrich our lives and benefit society. We believe that good research needs to be promoted, sustained and communicated. The Academy is run by a Council of its members. Membership is by election and considered the highest Academic honour in Ireland.
Read more about the RIAThe Dictionary of Irish Biography is Ireland’s national biographical dictionary. Devised, researched, written and edited under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy, its online edition covers nearly 11,000 lives.
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Read featured biographies and learn about the latest initiatives from the Dictionary of Irish Biography
Another new 'mssing persons' entry to the DIB is Nicholas Nolan (pictured above holding gloves), secretary to the Government and secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach (1961–72). A painstakingly efficient bureaucrat, Nolan was sometimes lampooned as 'Meticulous Nicholas'.
Our latest batch of 'missing persons' adds sixty-six fascinating figures from Irish history to the DIB. Today we're publishing Terry Clavin's new entry for Mary Bonaventura Browne, an abbess of the Poor Clares order whose writings are a valuable source for seventeenth century Irish women's history.
To mark the publication of our latest batch of 'missing persons', we publish the entry on Kate Meyrick by Margaret Elliott, below. Seated centre in the image above from 1928, Meyrick dominated the London nightclub scene through the roaring 1920s. She is among the sixty-six new 'missing persons' newly added to the DIB (nearly half of whom are women).
Florence Stoker, Oscar Wilde's 'first love' and the woman whose canny management of her husband Bram's estate helped make 'Dracula' a household name, is among the sixty-six 'missing persons' (twenty-eight of whom are women) newly added to the DIB this month.
Happy Christmas! We hope to evoke the festive spirit by publishing the DIB entry of actress and Christmas panto stalwart, Maureen Potter, by Lawrence William White.
To mark the publication of Ireland: a voice among the nations by John Gibney, Michael Kennedy and Kate O'Malley, we are publishing the intriguing biography of Máire O'Brien who also features in the book. O'Brien will appear for the first time in the DIB later in December.
Please write to the Managing Editor, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland, or email dib@ria.ie