Why the First World War Failed to End

Without the Great War, much of Europe’s history in the twentieth century cannot be adequately explained. The rise of fascism and bolshevism, or the escalation of an even more violent conflict between 1939 and 1945 are unthinkable without the Great War.  One hundred years after the end of the Great War, the legacies of that conflict still haunt us today, be it in Ireland or – even more strikingly – in the Middle East and in the current conflict between Russia and the Middle East. Here, the Great War raised questions that remain unanswered even today.

Robert Gerwarth is Professor of Modern History at UCD and Director of the Centre for War Studies. He also serves as Vice-Principal for Global Engagement in the College of Arts and Humanities. After studying history and political science in Berlin, he completed his DPhil and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford University. Prof. Gerwarth has also held research fellowships or visiting professorships at Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Sciences Po Paris. In 2013-14 he was an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Fellow at the Herder Institute in Marburg and a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. His latest book The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End was recently published by Allen Lane.

Dr. Marie Coleman is a Senior Lecturer in Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of The Irish Revolution (2013), The Irish Sweep (2009) and County Longford and the Irish Revolution (2002) as well as numerous articles on modern Irish history. She is involved in a number of projects relating to commemoration of the Irish decade of centenaries and is currently working on the experience of revolutionary veterans after independence, with particular reference to women.

Margaret O’ Callaghan MA (NUI) PhD (Cambridge) is an historian and political analyst at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast. A former Laski Research Scholar at St John’s College Cambridge and a former Fellow of Sidney Sussex, College, she has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Notre Dame. She is the author of numerous works on aspects of British high politics and the state apparatus in Ireland from the late nineteenth century to the revolution, on the fringe-fenian press, the careers of Richard Pigott and Tom Kettle. She co-edited with Mary E .Daly 1916 in 1966; Commemorating the Easter Rising (Royal Irish Academy, 2007).Her most recent publications are on Irish government policy on commemorating the Easter Rising of 1916 in the 1970’s,and on Roger Casement and the First World War. She is currently working on Alice Stopford Green, Roger Casement and their circles.

Hosted by Ronan McGreevy from The Irish Times. He is the author of Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front and the editor of Centenary, Ireland Remembers 1916, the official Irish State book for the Easter Rising commemorations of 2016. He is also the editor of Was it for This? Reflections on the Easter Rising and the presenter of the documentary United Ireland: how nationalists and unionists fought together in Flanders.

He has previously worked with The Times, the London Evening Standard and The Irish Post. He has also worked as a radio and television producer with the BBC and Sky News.