Academic Director: Prof. Barry McCrea
Barry McCrea is the Donald R. Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies and Concurrent Professor of English, Irish Language and Literature as well as Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame.
Barry McCrea is a novelist and scholar of comparative literature. He is the author of three books, Languages of the Night, winner of the American Comparative Literature Association’s René Wellek prize for the best book of 2016, In the Company of Strangers which was awarded the Heyman prize for scholarship in the humanities, and a novel, The First Verse, which won a number of awards including the Ferro-Grumley prize for fiction and a Barnes and Noble “Discover” prize. The First Verse was published in Spanish and in German. He teaches both comparative courses on broad themes dealing with literature in English, French, Irish, Italian, and Spanish (“Class, Desire, and the Novel”, “Narrative”, “The Novel in Europe”), and seminars on more specific topics (“Ulysses”, “Proust”, “Modern Irish Poetry”).
Before joining Notre Dame, he taught at Yale University, where he was appointed full professor of comparative literature in 2012. Professor McCrea is co-director and founder of the International Network for the Comparative Humanities. He teaches fall semesters in the Rome and Dublin Global Gateways, and spring semesters on campus.
Executive Director: Lisa Caulfield
Lisa Caufield is from Toronto, Canada and moved to Ireland in 2003. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto with an Honor’s BA in English and History and a minor in Theology. She is also a graduate of Ryerson University where she obtained a finance background. She spent six years working in publishing in Toronto.
Lisa completed an M.A. in modern Irish literature from the National University in Maynooth, County Kildare and has worked for the University of Notre Dame since 2004. In 2014, Lisa was appointed Director of the Kylemore Abbey Global Centre and by 2018 created an additional opportunity for ND junior semester abroad at the National University of Galway.
Lisa teaches the Immunity to Change module on the Executive education program that is annually hosted at Kylemore and is responsible for curating the interdisciplinary programs, courses, residencies and retreats hosted at the Global Centre.