Milieu 2023
Thursday, May 4, 2023 - 16:30
Today the 45th edition of Milieu, the MU Geography Society magazine was launched in the Rocque Lab. Huge thanks to William Durkan and Adrian Kavanagh for their work on the magazine and congratulations to all the contributors. It's a great read!
Here is Dr Steve McCarron's introduction:
It is my great pleasure and honour to welcome you to Milieu, 2023. If it is your first time encountering this august publication of Maynooth Geography then you are no doubt in for a very entertaining and illuminating treat. We are immensely proud of the long tradition of scholarship, positive experience and learning in Maynooth that this publication represents. We are thus greatly indebted to the many contributors and the Editorial team, thank you for all your efforts in stepping forward to write such interesting and well produced articles and especially (yet again) to Dr Will Durkan for his efforts beyond the call of duty to bring this year’s publication to the light of day.
So, please enjoy this wide ranging and diverse collection of writing. From a front cover depicting a world balanced on our scholarship, covered in societies’ labels and dominated by our oceans, to every word within Milieu as the name denotes as always captures a point in time. The University is our student body, and this publication allows a sense of how the world is being perceived. It is obvious that we still live in a divided world with multiple contested claims on its ownership, causing conflict and wars. However devastating recent natural hazards and the impact of climate change demonstrates that in fact no one owns anything on this beautiful planet, instead it is more accurate to consider that we share its permission to exist here. ‘Mother nature’ is stridently telling us though that enough has already been done to wound her severely, and that our multiple conflicts with and within our only home need to stop.
However, hope is what we still have that this can be done in time to avert further harm. The scholarship and education represented by this publication is, alongside our leadership in action and example, what we have to counter these challenges and reduce conflict everywhere and at all levels. I sincerely hope this continuation of a small but much valued learned tradition represented by Milieu gives you some additional hope reminds you of just how much we can progress in only a few short years. The attitude demonstrated here is exactly what is good and right about University life, and I commend the publication to you and wholeheartedly thank the contributors on all our behalf.
Best regards,
Dr Stephen McCarron, Head of the Department of Geography, Maynooth University, May 2023
Milieu 2023
Previous editions of Milieu are available
here.
