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When the University of Notre Dame established an institute for Irish studies in 1992, the general reaction was, “Wait, what, you don’t have one already?” It was, indeed, surprising that the home of the Fighting Irish — where 16 of the 17 presidents had an Irish ancestry — was lacking in scholarship related to Ireland for its first 150 years.

But with the creation of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Notre Dame quickly became, in the words of the Chronicle of Higher Education, “the largest program outside of Ireland for teaching and research in Irish language, literature and life.”