Susan Motherway is an ethnomusicologist from Kerry who lectures at the Munster Technological University. She is a flute and concertina player who has long been associated with the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, Siamsa Tire. She published her PhD "The Globalisation of Irish Traditional Music" with Ashgate in 2013 and UCC Press recently published a collection of papers on Staged Folklore she co-edited with Prof. John Morgan O'Connell. Susan was a founding member of ICTM Ireland and acted as secretary for several years.

Dr Kayla Rush is an anthropologist of art, music, and performance. Her current research examines private, extracurricular, fees-based rock and popular music schools in global perspective. Broader research and teaching interests include cultural politics, arts and education policy, accessibility and inclusion in education, emotion, cultural labour, and globalization, decolonization, and recolonization in popular music education. She is also a recognized teacher and practitioner of creative ethnographic writing, with a particular interest in ethnographic science fiction.

Dr Helen Gubbins is an ethnomusicologist and performer with an abiding interest in the interaction of medias and traditional musics. She is also an occasional lecturer, recording artist, and full-time secondary school teacher. Her writing has been published in Ethnomusicology Ireland, British Postgraduate Musicology, and the Routledge popular music edited collection, Made in Ireland. She was recently awarded her PhD by the University of Sheffield on the topic of traditional and folk music on Irish radio 1970-1994, funded by a University of Sheffield Doctoral Academy Scholarship and a National University of Ireland Travelling Studentship. Helen has been a part-time or guest lecturer at University College Cork, University College Dublin, Mary Immaculate College, the University of Sheffield, Newcastle University, and Berea College Kentucky. Helen has made extensive contributions to scholarly and professional societies in Ireland and the UK, most recently as part of the MeCCSA Radio Studies Network, Teachers’ Union of Ireland, and Wicklow Miners branch of CCÉ. Helen worked as Membership and Publications officer of ICTM-IE from 2009-2011. Helen has extensive international performing experience in the realm of Irish traditional music, and more recently in Javanese gamelan and in choral conducting in educational settings.

Darren Culliney is an Irish Traditional Musician, Composer and PhD Researcher from Ballinamuck, Co. Longford. He is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist with numerous awards and titles. A graduate from Maynooth University (Bachelor’s of Music and Masters in Music Composition), he is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music at Dundalk Institute of Technology. A member of the DkIT Creative Arts Research Centre, he is the beneficiary of a TUTF Postgraduate Research Scholarship and is under the joint supervision of Dr Daithí Kearney and Dr Verena Commins (University of Galway). His research examines the button accordion and Irish traditional music in Ulster.

For more visit www.darrenculliney.com

Avril McLoughlin is an Irish traditional fiddle player, teacher and post-doctoral researcher at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. Her interest in literacy, orality, notation and music theory in Irish traditional music led her to conduct PhD research entitled, Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice: Locating music theory and its pedagogies and curricula for Irish traditional musicians. This research examined Irish traditional musician’s conceptual structures of music theory and investigated how these frameworks inform pedagogical approaches when teaching Irish traditional music students. Avril has presented her research both nationally and internationally, including ISME 2018, ICTM 2019 and ICTM 2023. Additionally, she has taken part in a number of Erasmus+ exchanges including visits to Birzeit University and The Edward Said Conservatory, Palestine, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, Tbilisi State University, Georgia and University of Cape Coast, Ghana. As a performer, Avril has been featured numerous times on national and international radio and tv, as well as performing at festivals such as Festival Interceltique de Lorient (France) and Alpentöne Internationales Musikfestival (Switzerland).

Dr Anna Falkenau is a traditional musician, researcher, author and a teacher of Irish traditional music (third-level lecturing; instrumental tuition). As a Freyer-Hardiman Scholar at the University of Galway (2018-2024), Anna Falkenau conducted doctoral research on micro and macro flows in the development of Irish traditional music in Galway City between 1961 and 1981. Publications arising from this research include a core chapter entitled “‘It was in the Air’: Irish Traditional Music in Galway, 1960-1979,” contributed to Hardiman & Beyond: The Arts and Culture of Galway Since 1820, edited by John Cunningham and Ciaran McDonagh, as well as the essay "Intersections, Confluence, and Embodiment of Irish Traditional and Folk Music Revivals: Galway, 1961-1981," published in Ireland: Intersections and Dialogue, edited by Ondřey Pilný et al. Her interdisciplinary research of Irish traditional and folk music revival in the microcosm of Galway develops a new theoretical framework for ethnographic studies in an urban field. A critically acclaimed fiddle player, Anna Falkenau has released two albums, Féileacán na Saoirse - The Butterfly of Freedom (2014) and I Can Hear You Calling (2017) with five-string banjo player Lena Ullman; both albums received four-star reviews in The Irish Times and were positively reviewed by music press around the globe. An active performer she has performed with Dolores Keane, John Faulkner, Nuala Kennedy and many others, appearing in concerts nationally and internationally. www.annafalkenau.com

Obumneke Anyanwu is a PhD candidate in Musicology at Dublin City University and recipient of the prestigious Irish Research Council/ Research Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship (2024–2027). She holds an M.A. in Music and Multimedia, awarded cum laude by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her research focuses on film music in African screen cultures, with a particular emphasis on Nollywood. She is the founder of the Society for Music in Screen in Africa and has successfully organized its inaugural conference. Her forthcoming publication includes a chapter on film music in Nigeria, which will appear in “The Cambridge Global History of Film Music,” to be published by Cambridge University Press. Obumneke’s passion for music and film music pedagogy guides her future career in teaching the art.

Jack Talty is an award-winning concertina player, composer, educator, and academic from Lissycasey in county Clare. As a performer, he has toured extensively throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia, and he has contributed to over 100 albums to date as a musician, producer, composer, arranger, and engineer. In 2011, Jack established the critically-acclaimed traditional music label, Raelach Records.

Jack is Lecturer in Irish Traditional Music at the Department of Music at University College Cork, where he is the Programme Director of the Department's new MA in Irish Traditional Music. His publications and research and teaching interests span areas as broad as performance practice; composition; traditional arts pedagogy and curriculum design; artistic research; the album as a creative practice output; canonicity in music education; and arts policy

An experienced arts advocate, Jack has been a member of the steering committee of the National Campaign for the Arts since 2023, and he is a Board Member of Glór Theatre in Ennis. He is a regular contributor to traditional arts programming on various regional, national and international media.

See www.jacktalty.com for more.

Joanne Cusack delivers lectures on performance, ethnomusicology, musicology, gender and sexuality studies at the Department of Music, Maynooth University. She is also an Irish traditional musician who has performed both nationally and internationally, and is a co-founder of the activist organisation, FairPlé. In May 2024, Joanne was shortlisted for the Public Engagements Awards at Maynooth University for her research and activist work. In January 2025, Joanne was named as the winner of the Harry White Doctoral Prize of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.