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
To mark Pride 2019 the DIB is publishing its entries on celebrated diarist Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831) and her life partner Lady Eleanor Butler (c.1739–1829), known as the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’.
To mark Bloomsday (16 June) the DIB is publishing its full, unedited entry for James Joyce by Bruce Bradley.
The DIB is publishing its entry for Nora Barnacle, life-partner of James Joyce. The couple had their first date on 16 June 1904, a date immortalised in his novel Ulysses (1922) and thereafter celebrated as 'Bloomsday'.
Read the DIB entry for Paul Strzelecki, the Polish humanitarian whose efforts saved up to 200,000 children during the Great Irish Famine.
To mark the feast day of Colum Cille (Columba) on 9 June, the DIB is publishing its entry by Aidan Breen on the Irish saint who founded the influential monastery at Iona.
To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day the DIB is publishing its entry on Columbanus Deegan, one of the many Irish men and women who took part in the intense final push in 1944 in France.
Please write to the Managing Editor, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland, or email dib@ria.ie