Professor Margaret Burke has served in the Axinn Library Reference Department since 1999. Her subject areas include Women's Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures and she has now taken on the responsibility of Irish Studies. As liaison to Irish Studies, Professor Burke has been bringing the Library collection in this area up to date. She has an M.A. in Humanities and has published on the contemporary Irish poet, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. Professor Burke has had the opportunity to study in Ireland and travels there often.

Professor Darrah Carr holds an MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Named one of the Influential Women of 2010; by the Irish Voice and one of the Top 40 Under 40 by the Irish Echo. She is the Artistic Director of Darrah Carr Dance and describes her choreographic style as Moderin: a unique blend of traditional Irish step and contemporary modern dance. Recent performance highlights include: NBC's The Today Show and a performance with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Carr has presented her research at the Congress on Research in Dance, the World Dance Alliance, and Dance Research Forum Ireland. She recently contributed a chapter to Close to the Floor: Irish Dance from the Boreen to Broadway, published by Macater Press. Carr has also written numerous articles for Dance Magazine, Dance Studio Life, Dancer, and the Dance Insider. www.darrahcarrdance.com.

Dr. John Louis DiGaetani is a professor of English. He teaches modern Anglo-Irish drama both on campus and at Hofstra's London Program. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His most recent book, Stages of Struggle: Modern Playwrights and their Psychological Inspirations, discusses many Irish playwrights including Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Eugene O'Neill, Brian Friel, and Martin McDonagh. His earlier book, Richard Wagner and the Modern British Novel, analyzes the novels of James Joyce.

Dr. Gregory Michael Maney is an associate professor of Sociology. Focusing upon Irish politics and history, his undergraduate education included studies at both Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2001. His dissertation focused upon transnational dimensions of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Much of his current research explores the dynamics of ethno-nationalist contention and strategies for sustaining peace processes. Articles pertaining to the Troubles that he has either sole authored or co-authored have appeared in leading peer reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Conflict Management; Journal of Peace Research; Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change; and Social Problems. He has directed Hofstra's Summer in Ireland Program. He is also an active member of the Irish American Society of Nassau, Suffolk, and Queens County.

Dr. Charles McMellon is an Associate Professor of Marketing and International Business. Dr.McMellon earned a Ph.D. in business at The City University of New York. His dissertation was one of the first to examine consumer behavior of the elderly on the Internet. Dr. McMellon brings 24 years of advertising managerial experience at such firms as Young & Rubicam; Foote, Cone & Belding; and Ally and Gargano to his teaching. His research interests include International Business with an emphasis on Ireland, the consumer behavior aspects of new media, and advertising management, strategy and tactics. Dr. McMellon's articles have been published in the Journal of Direct Marketing, the Journal of Applied Gerontology, the Journal of Advertising Education, The Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, Journal of Services Marketing, and Advances in Consumer Research. He is a member of the editorial review board of The Journal of Business Research and The Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising.

Dr. Maureen Murphy is Professor of Curriculum and Teaching in the School of Education, Health and Human Services. A past president of the American Conference for Irish Studies and a past chair of the International Assocation for the Study of Irish Literatures, Murphy is one of the six senior editors of the forthcoming Dictionary of Irish Biography which will be published in nine volumes and on line by the Royal Irish Academy and Cambridge University Press in 2009. Murphy edited Asenath Nicholson's Annals of the Famine in Ireland (1998) and Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger (2002), Annie O'Donnell's Your Fondest Annie (2005) and with James MacKillop edited Irish Literature: A Reader (1987, rev. ed. 2006). Murphy directed the New York State Great Irish Curriculum Project (2001); it won the National Conference for the Social Studies Excellence Award in 2002. Murphy was the historian of the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City.

Professor Leandra Reilly has been teaching in the Radio, Television and Film department of the School of Communication since 2004. An award winning national broadcaster with over twenty years experience in television news and sports, she is also a critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker whose film has been screened at the IFFM of New York City. The documentary, "Running Down a Dream," premiered in Philadelphia and was televised nationally on pay-per-view. A producer of music videos and award winning mini-documentaries, she also produces instructional videos and infomercials. She studied screenwriting at NYU, and is a member of IFP and ASCAP. At Hofstra she teaches "Sound & Image Aesthetics" as well as "Television Performing." A frequent traveler to Europe-including Ireland and Northern Ireland, Reilly studied at the Paris/ American Academy of Fine Arts.

Professor Connie Roberts graduated from Hofstra University with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature and Creative Writing and is now a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program at Hofstra. Her poetry has been published in journals in the United States and Ireland, most recently in the New Irish Writing section of the Sunday Tribune, one of Ireland's national newspapers. Her work in that publication was a finalist for the 2009 Hennessy Cognac Literary Awards. She was a finalist in the Strokestown International Poetry Competition in 2001 and the Dana Awards in 2003, as well as a semi-finalist in the Discovery/The Nation; Contest in New York in 2000 and 2002. Her book-length manuscript, ;Not the Delft School;a memoir in verse inspired by her experiences growing up in an orphanage in Ireland;placed second in the prestigious 2007 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award.

Professor John Walsh is an adjunct lecturer in the Teaching, Literacy and Leadership Department. He retired from the New York City School System in 1995 after thirty-four years as an English teacher and English Department Chair, most of his years being at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens. He earned a supervisor's certificate and his Masters Degree at Brooklyn College and his BA at St. John's. He started working with student teachers at Hofstra University in 1996 and continues until the present. Since 1981, Professor Walsh has been the editor of The Hedgemaster, the newsletter of the Irish Cultural Society. He has written over thirty articles for the newsletter, many of which are posted on the Society's website, www.irish- society.org. For over twenty years, Mr. Walsh has managed the writing contest for the Society, a contest which is open to all high school students in Nassau County. He feels fortunate to have been working at Hofstra when the Irish Studies Program was created.

Dr. Phyllis Zagano is the author of eleven books in religious studies and editor of the new Liturgical Press "Spirituality in History" Series. She has published hundreds of articles and reviews in popular and scholarly journals, and is the Catholic columnist for the nationally syndicated Religion News Service. Her book, Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church, won both a Catholic Press Association First Place Book Award and the College Theology Society Annual Book Award. Her work has been translated into Czech, Indonesian, Italian, and Spanish, and the Spanish edition of her best-selling On Prayer: A Letter for My Godchild won a Catholic Press Association Book Award. Her biographical listings include Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, and Who's Who in American Education. A graduate of Marymount College, Tarrytown, NY, she holds a Ph.D. from the SUNY at Stony Brook, and three master's degrees: in communications, literature, and theology. She has taught at Fordham, Boston, and Yale Universities, and currently holds a research appointment at Hofstra. During Spring, 2009 she is a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Limerick, Ireland, lecturing and doing research on the history of women's ministry.