Carmel McCarthy, RSM, elected to Membership of the Royal Irish Academy

The Royal Irish Academy was founded by Charter in 1785 for the advancement of learning and scholarship in Ireland. The Academy's foundation was in recognition of a national culture famous in ancient times for its schools and seminaries of learning, and which has produced many persons of eminence in every branch of science and the humanities since then. Membership of the Royal Irish Academy is open to residents of the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland. Candidates must be proposed and nominated by five Members of the Academy. From these nominations, twenty candidates who have attained international distinction in science or the humanities, as evidenced by their published work, are elected in March of each year after a rigorous, peer-reviewed selection procedure. Members of the Academy are entitled to use the letters MRIA after their names. At the General Meeting of the Academy on 15 March 2008, Carmel McCarthy (South Central Province) was among the twenty Irish scholars elected to membership this year. She will be formally inducted into Academy membership at a special ceremony in May 2008. After a group photograph of the new Members in academic robes, the formal Admittance Ceremony will take place in Academy House, Dawson Street. The new Members will formally sign the Members' Roll, and be presented with their Certificates of Membership. The Academy President will then lead the new Members in a public procession to the Mansion House next door, where there will be a special reception in the Oak Room to mark the exceptional honour of election to Academy membership.