Black, Brown, and Green Voices: Dr. Lara Cassidy, Geneticist, Trinity College Dublin
March 7, 2022
The African American Irish Diaspora Network presented, "Black, Brown, and Green Voices." This virtual presentation of conversations focused on the interconnectedness of peoples of Irish and African descent. The presentation was titled, "Ancient Irish Diversity Through Time: A Genomic Journey: Dr. Lara Cassidy, Assistant Professor of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin."
Dr. Lara Cassidy is an Assistant Professor of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a PhD in Palaeogenomics from TCD's Smurfit Institute of Genetics where she was an awardee of a postgraduate scholarship by the Irish Research Council. Her doctoral focus was the application of DNA sequencing technologies to the study of Irish prehistory, which resolved longstanding questions on the origins of the modern population. Her group's current research focus is the creation of a dense temporal dataset of ancient Irish genomes. This is being used to study the evolutionary forces that have shaped human health and disease on the island, as well as to reconstruct prehistoric social structures and cultural practices through patterns of relatedness and inbreeding.
Dr. Cassidy was in conversation with Dr. Miriam Nyhan Grey about Lara's research on the hunter-gatherer populations who lived in Ireland prior to the arrival of agriculture. Forensic prediction techniques suggest these people had dark skin and blue eyes and were relatively isolated from related populations in Britain and Europe.
This series was presented in collaboration with NYU's Glucksman Ireland House, NYU’s John Brademas Center and the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Registration was required in order to receive the Zoom-log in details for the webinar. This program was open to everyone.
Black, Brown and Green Voices represent a documentation strategy and public humanities initiative which aims to amplify the diversity of the Irish diaspora by recording interviews with Black and Brown Irish Americans and those who speak to the Black experience in Ireland. The project director is historian Dr. Miriam Nyhan Grey who has been based at New York University since 2008 and is a founding board member of the African American Irish Diaspora Network. This series of programs is presented by the African American Irish Diaspora Network in collaboration with Glucksman Ireland House, NYU.