Reflecting on her life’s work, Dr. Mary McAleese will be interviewed by journalist Carole Coleman at The Dock on Friday 7 February. This is a special event in support of the Croghan Community Development Fund.
Dr. Mary McAleese was President of Ireland from 1997 until 2011. She was the first President to come from Northern Ireland. Born in Belfast in 1951, the eldest of nine children she grew up in Ardoyne, a sectarian flashpoint area of the city, and experienced first-hand the violence of The Troubles. The theme of her presidency was Building Bridges, although her work for peace and reconciliation began long before becoming President, which culminated in the historic state visit to Ireland by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II in May 2011.
A barrister, author, documentary maker, podcaster and broadcaster, she was Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin, Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies and first female pro-Vice Chancellor at the Queen's University of Belfast. On retiring from office in 2011, she became a full-time student of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome obtaining a Licenciate and Doctorate in Canon Law.
Dr. McAleese researches and writes on human rights and children’s rights in the Catholic Church. She was Professor of Children, Law and Religion at the University of Glasgow, 2018-2022 and is currently Chancellor of Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Reconciled Being (1997); Quo Vadis (2018); Children’s Rights and Obligations in Canon Law (2019); The Seventeen Irish Martyrs (2022). She is married to Martin since 1976, has three children and two grandsons. She lives in Cootehall, County Roscommon across the Shannon from the family home of her father and grandparents who lived near Croghan.
