Grad Students Abroad Special
Emerald Isle Edition
By Guest Contributor Jesse Schwartz
This past summer, I had the privilege of spending 8 weeks as an archival intern at the Jackie Clarke Collection in Ballina, Ireland. I had this opportunity because of the Irish Studies Program at Villanova, which sends (and funds!) two or three students from Villanova to the Jackie Clarke every summer. I had never been to Ireland before, and it was an amazing experience to live and work in Ballina, which is a small town in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. The museum is a small, publicly funded, non-profit collection of historical materials that formerly belonged to Ballina resident, Jackie Clarke. The museum has three full-time employees, and a rotating part-time staff of six other workers, all of whom were lovely to get to know and work with. In his lifetime, Jackie Clarke collected over 100,000 pieces of Irish history, and turned his collection over to the town after his death in 2013. My job was two-fold: half of the week I spent in the archive, digitizing materials; the other half of the week, I spent receiving visitors at the front desk of the museum, and helping guide them through the exhibits. Both jobs were fun and interesting, and I absolutely loved looking around the museum myself. I lived with the other intern in an apartment near the museum, and we spent our free time exploring the town, and also much of the rest of Ireland! The director of the Jackie Clarke, Edel Golden, even took several days to show us the other cultural sites of Mayo. Undoubtedly, the highlight of living and working in Ireland for the summer was how warm and welcoming the people were. I can't wait to go back and visit!
By Guest Contributor Jesse Schwartz
This past summer, I had the privilege of spending 8 weeks as an archival intern at the Jackie Clarke Collection in Ballina, Ireland. I had this opportunity because of the Irish Studies Program at Villanova, which sends (and funds!) two or three students from Villanova to the Jackie Clarke every summer. I had never been to Ireland before, and it was an amazing experience to live and work in Ballina, which is a small town in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. The museum is a small, publicly funded, non-profit collection of historical materials that formerly belonged to Ballina resident, Jackie Clarke. The museum has three full-time employees, and a rotating part-time staff of six other workers, all of whom were lovely to get to know and work with. In his lifetime, Jackie Clarke collected over 100,000 pieces of Irish history, and turned his collection over to the town after his death in 2013. My job was two-fold: half of the week I spent in the archive, digitizing materials; the other half of the week, I spent receiving visitors at the front desk of the museum, and helping guide them through the exhibits. Both jobs were fun and interesting, and I absolutely loved looking around the museum myself. I lived with the other intern in an apartment near the museum, and we spent our free time exploring the town, and also much of the rest of Ireland! The director of the Jackie Clarke, Edel Golden, even took several days to show us the other cultural sites of Mayo. Undoubtedly, the highlight of living and working in Ireland for the summer was how warm and welcoming the people were. I can't wait to go back and visit!
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