CARC Research Symposium: 'Death, Dirt and Decay'
Dundalk Institute of Technology will host a one-day interdisciplinary symposium exploring the cultural, creative and ecological themes connected to Samhain and Hallowe’en. The event, organised by the Creative Arts Research Centre in the School of Informatics and Creative Arts, will take place in The Carroll’s Building on Wednesday 28th October 2026.
Dr Lauren Cassidy, a Research Ireland Industry RD&I Postdoctoral Fellow with Maynooth University and the Museum of Literature, Ireland (MoLI), will deliver the keynote presentation. Dr Cassidy’s academic work has previously appeared in Literature Interpretation Theory and the Irish University Review. In 2025, she edited and released Quare Éire: An Anthology of Neo-mythmaking, a digital collection of creative writing and artwork. She has previously held teaching fellowships and research positions at University College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, and Mary Immaculate College.
The festival of Samhain, rooted in Celtic pagan beliefs, continues to inspire, provoke, and trouble us. Once a time to honour the dead, our continued fascination with Samhain, or Hallowe’en, has infiltrated all areas of social culture and inspired creative activity. We invite scholars across disciplines to present on the themes of ‘Death, Dirt and Decay’. This showcase opportunity encourages the submission of essays or creative formats, including music, performance, creative writing and media on the topic of Samhain.
Encompassing the supernatural and the importance of ritual, the traditional celebration was one of the four Celtic Festivals, which include Imbolc, Bealtaine and Lughnasadh. Samhain marks the end of the harvest, our entry into the darkness of winter; a time where the veil between life and death is at its thinnest, encouraging entry from beyond of ‘others’. The evocative symbolistic power of ‘creatures of the night’ and other undead beings conjures creativity; infiltration of the imagined into the real continues to delight and disturb us.
Samhain’s significance in the arts, entertainment and tourism industries continues to escalate. Evident in films and stage productions, locally festivals such as Co Louth’s ‘Lú Festival of Lights’ and Co Meath’s ‘Pucá Festival’ embrace this cultural landscape, evoking dark imagery and ritual through a programme of annual events designed to inform and enthral.
The chosen themes of death, dirt and decay are relevant to our historical and contemporary relationship, observance and understanding of Samhain. Fear, death and nature have always intersected in Irish culture; from John Kelly’s ‘Walking Graves’ of An Gorta Mór; symbolism in Séamus Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’; and Sinead O’Connor’s enigmatic cover with Shane McGowan of ‘Haunted’. The discovery of bog bodies and the destruction of ancient sites extended our explorations between death and its ecologies, and the relationship between traditional and contemporary forms in which Samhain is observed and celebrated through an environmental lens. Many of our contemporary activities and imageries are imported from other practices, prompting a suitably spectral blurring of folklore and history. This has promoted the importation of artificial skeletons, bones and other plastic paraphernalia, all of which will exist in Irish landscapes long after our own bodies have disintegrated.