On Friday, April 12th, 3rd Year History students enjoyed a fantastic day trip to two very interesting venues. They first visited ‘EPIC’,  The Irish Emigration Museum, located in Dublin’s Docklands, which covers the history of the Irish diaspora and emigration to other countries.

The exhibition is made up of twenty galleries which are each individually themed, and fall under the headings of Migration (Galleries 1 to 2), Motivation (Galleries 4 to 7), Influence (Galleries 8 to 18) and Diaspora Today (Galleries 19 to 20).

For example, the “Migration” galleries deal with migration patterns from Ireland since 500 AD. These galleries cover religious missionary work, the Irish famine, religious and social persecution, criminal transportation, and the effects of Irish involvement in foreign conflicts. Displays include a series of video testimonies from six Irish emigrants.

EPIC has been described as the world’s first fully digital museum and has won  ‘Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction’ at the World Travel Awards in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Afterwards, the students visited Glasnevin Cemetry. The cemetery contains historically notable monuments and the graves of many of Ireland’s most prominent national figures. These include the graves of Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Maude Gonne, Kevin Barry, Roger Casement, Constance Markievicz, Seán MacBride, Jeremiah O‘Donovan Rossa, James Larkin, Brendan Behan, Christy Brown and Luke Kelly of the Dubliners.