The graceful Georgian facades of this century bely the ugly reality of repression. Penal Laws kept Dissenting Protestants as well as Catholics out of politics and government but were far more numerous with regard to Catholics, especially for landholding and inheritance. The Church of Ireland ruling class (less than 10 per cent of the population) was fabulously wealthy. A nascent Protestant ‘nationalism’ protested against English domination, and this evolved, for some, into a recognition of the injustice of the Penal Laws by about 1770. Catholics, meanwhile, ducked and dived and did what they could, running schools and going to Mass when they could. Some held onto land. Some sons of the gentry served in continental armies. Some built up fortunes in commerce. Most were poor.

Transport networks improved, and fairs and markets increased. Wool, hides, provisions and timber exports throve. The potato soared in popularity, enabling people to survive on smallholdings. The population of the propertyless rose, even after the terrible mortality of the famine of 1739–1741.

Men and women writing in both languages found ready audiences (listening, watching and reading) for songs, poems, plays, essays and books. Irish was still the majority language but many Irish-speakers, especially the writers and poets, also understood English. Literacy levels rose and lively interest was taken in the news from America and France in the 1770s and 1780s.

Meteorites constitute the most abundant source of extraterrestrial material. They formed under a wide range of redox conditions and contain many minerals not found on Earth. Their study extends the range of known petrological and geochemical processes; they serve as concrete examples of shock metamorphism of natural materials. They contain the most ancient examples of organic compounds and aqueously altered minerals that can be studied in the lab. Calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs) yield the age of the Solar System and CI chondrites provide the cosmic abundances of most elements. Meteorites can provide information about the interactions between cosmic rays and solid materials. They likely delivered raw materials to the early Earth, possibly facilitating the origin of life. Impact-crater formation by asteroids is the main geomorphological process in the Solar System; it changed the course of biological evolution on Earth. Meteorites provide clues to the geological history of asteroids, the Moon, and Mars, and many iron meteorites provide samples of planetesimal cores. Presolar grains permit the in situ examination of materials from other stars that existed long before the Solar System.

The essay explores pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Dodona, in Epirus, through a phenomenological lens, aiming to reconstruct the experience of ancient pilgrims. The study highlights the significance of landscape, movement, and motivation, on the basis that Dodona’s natural features and architectural layout deeply influenced pilgrims’ perceptions. The phenomenological approach draws on landscape archaeology, analyzing human interaction with sacred spaces. The analysis examines not only motivations behind oracular activity, but also other purposes, such as attending the Naia festival, and emphasizes the interplay of visibility and movement as pilgrims approached the sanctuary. Although reconstructing individual experiences is challenging, common patterns in collective behavior, such as rituals, processions, and religious practices, offer insights into the ancient pilgrimage experience. In short, the study uses literary, epigraphic, and material evidence to discuss how Dodona’s sacred landscape shaped its visitors’ religious and emotional experiences, contributing to a broader understanding of Greek pilgrimage traditions.

Meteorites are classified using a hierarchical scheme based on the degree of relatedness of samples. Chondrite groups are typically from a single parent body; clans and classes are clusters of related groups that accreted in similar regions of the solar nebula. Classification of a new meteorite requires visual observation of macroscopic characteristics, microscopic examination of textures, and analyses of minerals. Isotopic or bulk compositional data may also be acquired.

The Irish parliament was abolished in 1800 and those who supported its abolition were then and thereafter known as unionists. The 1798 rebellion, organized by Irish republicans led by Wolfe Tone, incorporating Catholic and Protestant and partly supported by the French, had alarmed the British. Most Penal legislation was gone by 1792 but Catholics were still not allowed to stand for parliament. Daniel O’Connell challenged this with a campaign culminating in Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and his subsequent campaign to repeal the union continued this constitutional nationalism. Various administrative, legal and educational reforms in the 1830s dismantled Protestant privilege some more. Meanwhile, the population of the poorest continued to grow, surviving precariously on the potato, until over a million died in the Great Famine of 1845–1849, and another 900,000 panic-emigrated. The small and unsuccessful Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 expressed a physical force nationalism that O’Connell had disavowed, and kept the focus on Irish grievances.

By 1850, the Irish language was in serious decline all over the country.

Chapter 5 examines the distinctive characteristics of Nordic leadership at the individual level, highlighting how cooperation and consensus-building form its core. It introduces the concept of “wicked problems” to demonstrate why Nordic leadership approaches – characterized by humility, collaboration, and democratic engagement – are particularly well-suited for addressing complex sustainability challenges. The chapter identifies key Nordic leadership norms including cooperation, modesty, humanism, and democracy, contrasting them with more hierarchical approaches common in American business. Through analysis of how Nordic leaders navigate complex challenges, it demonstrates why these leadership practices are increasingly relevant for addressing global sustainability challenges. The chapter concludes by arguing that while Nordic leadership may not suit every situation, its emphasis on cooperation and stakeholder engagement offers valuable lessons for tackling the complex, interconnected problems represented by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This essay pursues an ontological understanding of consultations at Dodona. The premise of this investigation is that if we are to understand a divinatory consultation as the Greeks themselves did, then we need to put aside our own Western Post-Enlightenment (largely secular) ontological assumptions concerning the existence of supernatural beings and view the world through the ontological assumptions of the Greeks themselves. This is a much more radical suggestion than the traditional injunction of putting on the cultural filters of the ancient Greeks, in as much as that step is then invariably followed by an act of cultural translation (which all too often is a ‘mistranslation’). The practice of divination, therefore, should be analysed in emic terms and then described in those terms as well, rather than being re-described in our own terms. Nevertheless, the emic understanding of a consultation can be enhanced by the application of Actor-Network Theory and an Object-Oriented Ontology, since they reveal the implicit social dynamics involved in consulting and interpreting oracles.

Whether on- or off-stage, the priests of Irish drama exert power to censor debate and restrict behaviour both in public and domestic spaces. John Millington Synge explores the agency of the absent priest whose parishioners become his delegates. Playwrights such as John B. Keane demonstrate the consequences of defying the priest. Such assertive characters are often female, as in works by Sean O’Casey and James McKenna. While O’Casey satirises the priest’s excessive influence, Brian Friel portrays the clergy’s ability to detroy individual reputations with pathos. Following a tradition of antagonistic relations between Anglo-Irish drama and religion, and in contexts of social change, authors such as Tom Murphy, Sebastian Barry, Jim Nolan, and Billy Roche consider topics such as the sacred, epiphany, and forgiveness in strikingly priestless dramas.

Chapter 8 critically examines key critiques and limitations of Nordic capitalism, with particular focus on its fundamental contradiction: While celebrated as sustainability leaders, Nordic nations consume resources at rates requiring multiple Earths’ worth of regenerative capacity – a reality that fundamentally undermines their global reputation and demands urgent action. Through systematic analysis of common “Yeah, but” dismissals, the chapter explores how Nordic societies navigate tensions between sustainability ambitions and consumption practices, immigration and welfare state maintenance, and racial equality and social cohesion. While acknowledging these serious challenges, particularly the urgent need to address overconsumption, it demonstrates how Nordic societies’ democratic institutions enable constructive responses to complex problems. It argues that examining Nordic shortcomings yields valuable insights for other nations seeking to advance sustainable development through democratic means. The chapter concludes that maintaining curiosity and openness to learning from others’ experiences – both successes and failures – is essential for addressing global sustainability challenges.

This chapter argues that the interpretation of the dialogue should not be constrained by its relationship to the Apology, as has often been done, and that its chronological place among the dialogues is uncertain. The dialogue should be interpreted in its own terms.

This chapter traces the ECtHR’s growing authority and legitimacy in the post-1990 era to explain how it emerged as a new legal venue for workers marginalized by domestic neoliberal restructuring. Based on original data compiled in StrasLab, a comprehensive database of ECtHR labor cases, the chapter offers a systematic account of how labor rights claims have gained ground within the Court’s evolving jurisprudence. It analyzes how the Court’s interpretation of key Convention provisions gradually expanded to cover a wide range of issues, including dismissals, wage cuts, surveillance, discrimination, forced labor, workers’ health and safety, and trade union rights. Zooming in on trade union rights, the chapter identifies three temporal shifts in the Court’s jurisprudence. During the initial period, the ECtHR largely adhered to a narrow reading of labor rights and rejected most claims. This was followed by the golden years for trade unions at the ECtHR, when the Court significantly expanded protections under Article 11 and issued groundbreaking rulings advancing trade union rights. In recent years, however, mounting political backlash has led to a more cautious posture: while the Court has refrained from rolling back existing protections, it has hesitated to extend them further.

Biblically, we Jews identify God with Truth and Truth with Justice. But we also identify Justice in its highest form (tzedakah) with generosity or grace (hesed) and grace in turn with the beauty that finds its source and highest peak in God.

Religion is central to Seamus Heaney’s work. Alongside his preoccupations with Catholic and Celtic belief, ancient Greek and Roman religions are significant in Heaney’s methodological palette, in which ‘low intensity’ allusions to aspects of religious culture can inform operations of poetry and ritual. Greek and Roman culture provides Heaney with a repository of spirit-guide figures, symbolic characters such as Heracles and Tiresias, forms and tropes, including funerary rituals, burial, pilgrimage, and katabasis, and entire works which the poet reimagined, such as Sophocles’s Philoctetes and Euripides’s Antigone, in which civic and religious duties intersect in ways germane to the poet’s reflections on his own time.