The University of Galway

From Queen's College to Ollscoil na Gaillimhe

The college was founded in 1845 alongside Queen's Colleges in Cork and Belfast, and in 1850 joined the Queen's University of Ireland, which conferred its degrees until that body was dissolved in 1882. It was University College Galway from 1908 to 1997, National University of Ireland Galway from 1997 to 2022, and took its present name in 2022. It belongs to the Coimbra Group of 42 old European universities.

The Quadrangle with its Aula Maxima was designed by John Benjamin Keane in Tudor Gothic and built of local limestone as a replica of Christ Church, Oxford. The main library is named for James Hardiman, its first librarian.

The Irish language

The University College Galway Act of 1929 gave the university a statutory duty towards Irish as a working language: when hiring, a candidate competent in Irish had to be appointed unless none could be found, so every president since has been an Irish speaker. The governing authority later complained that the rule narrowed the field for the presidency, particularly for candidates from abroad.

Colleges, clubs and the province's rugby

Until 2007 there were seven faculties and some 69 departments; since 2007 the university is organised in five colleges of schools, from Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies, with the Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, to Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. Five designated research institutes sit across them. About 150 student societies are active, the oldest the Literary and Debating Society of 1846; Dramsoc dates from 1914 and the history society is one of Europe's oldest. More than forty sports clubs compete, and the GAA club is the second most successful in the history of the Sigerson Cup.

In 2013 the university began sponsoring Connacht Rugby and set up a partnership to educate the academy's players; seventeen of the squad were already students or graduates. Within three years Connacht won its first Pro12 title, beating Leinster in the 2016 final, with seven academy players making 55 appearances that season.

People and pages

Two presidents of Ireland studied here, Michael D. Higgins, who also taught sociology, and Catherine Connolly, as did the former Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the actors Martin Sheen and Nicola Coughlan, and Enya. George Johnstone Stoney, who named the electron, and Alice Perry, the engineer, were on its staff. Breandán Ó hEithir set his novel Lig Sinn i gCathú, once on the Leaving Certificate course, in a thinly disguised Galway of April 1949. The QS rankings have placed the university in the world's top one per cent, and the Sunday Times has named it University of the Year three times.