The Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland (CDSI) supports a transdisciplinary culture of collaborative research across the various strands of Dante Studies. The Centre is part of and housed in the Department of Italian, University College Cork, Ireland. Establishment in 2020 the CDSI responds to a genuine need within the Irish academic, creative and intellectual communities to have an Irish-based centre which not only fosters world-class research on the figure of Dante and the myriad of related fields related to him (Medieval Studies; Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Narrative; Music and Art; Philosophy; Theology and Creative Practice), but which engages with the wider public in exploring how Dante’s encyclopaedic Divine Comedy creates a rich dialogue with today on notions centred on citizenship, exile and migration, moral responsibility, conflict resolution, the polysemous nature of language and much else besides.

Since our very earliest literature in Ireland, the afterlife, its representations and configurations (Navigatio Sancti Brendani; Visio Tnugdali), has exerted an enduring hold on the Irish imagination and indeed influenced European cultural expression in the Middle Ages. The finest and most complete expression of this was Dante Alighieri’s literary masterpiece The Divine Comedy, or as he simply called it La Commedia. In turn, Dante’s global influence is immense, but especially in Ireland where the great writers and poets of modern times have all looked to Dante and inscribed him into their poetics (Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Heaney, Carson, O’Donoghue etc.).

The CDSI promotes the study of Dante from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both within the UCC and beyond.

The goals of the Centre are

• To support individual and collaborative research on Dante and affiliated areas (medieval and modern and contemporary) within the Department of Italian in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and beyond.
• To facilitate and enable interdisciplinary research collaboration within the School, in the first instance, as well as across the University and internationally
• To support funding bids (IRC, ERC) in liaison with the CACSSS and OVPRI
• To attract IRC and ERC Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship applicants and to support such applications
• To disseminate research outputs to wider audiences across the university and the general public, including a dynamic virtual presence.
• To contribute to national and international intellectual debates, drive cultural initiatives, and engage effectively with international dialogues around the figure of Dante.