Profile with Siofra Pierse
Síofra Pierse (Ireland & Trinity 1994) is Head of University College Dublin School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics where she is also a Professor in French and Francophone Studies. She first taught Early Modern French at a number of Oxford Colleges, before working as Maître de Langues at École Normale Supérieure, Paris. She holds a D.Phil. in Modern Languages (French) from the University of Oxford, M.St in Research Methods in Modern Languages (Oxford) and a BA (Hons.) in Italian and French from University College Cork.
Rhodes Project: Where did you grow up?
Síofra Pierse: I am Irish, and I grew up in Ireland. I was born in Dublin and spent my childhood in a lovely little place called Wexford, known as the “Sunny South-East”. It was a little country town on the coast at the time – very close to a 10-mile-long beach called Curracloe. I grew up practically on the beach and in the fields; it was pleasant and simple. I know we all look back on our childhood as being ideal, but it really was beautiful. So, my earliest memories are of idyllic countrysides. Mine was a very innocent childhood where I read and talked in equal parts, but I was also fortunate enough to have huge travel opportunities later on, which I think is really important and that shaped me. When I was ten years old we moved to a bigger city called Cork, partly because my parents thought that there were better opportunities for the whole family in a university town. From there I lived all over Europe. When I was twelve, my mother started working in France, so I spent a good amount of time there. That was an exciting opportunity which changed my perspective forever, and for which I am eternally grateful to my parents. I studied for my first BA degree in the local university, in Cork, Ireland, and went from there to Oxford when I won the Rhodes Scholarship.
Rhodes Project: Who is your favorite author and why?
Síofra Pierse: I have done a great deal of work on the French 18th-century ‘philosophe’ Voltaire. I am very much an 18th century scholar, with publications on an eclectic variety of authors and aspects of the 18th-century world. My husband teases me because when I go abroad on holiday I’ll often bring an 18th century book for pleasure. He wonders why I am bringing ‘work’ along, so I explain that the 18th century isn’t work, it’s pleasure. In spite of doing my PhD on Voltaire, lecturing on the 18th century, and continuing to research and publish on 18th century ideas and writers, I still find Voltaire and his contemporaries from the French Enlightenment to be inspirational figures, particularly those unsung women like Riccoboni, Du Châtelet, Charrière and so many more who are only now being brought back to life. I think much of my enjoyment derives from the characters involved and their individual successes. For example, Voltaire was a tireless figure; he was very persistent; he believed in justice; and he fought widely against both religious and judicial injustices in his day. These issues are still incredibly pertinent nowadays. Religious, social and judicial injustices are still happening all over the world, so when Cecil Rhodes talked about fighting the world’s fight, we realise that Voltaire was fighting that same fight before Rhodes and many continue to fight it today. I think Voltaire had an acute sense of the perpetual nature of the need to counter injustice. And I think that’s what drove him and kept him going even into his eighties. He was a really energetic figure – he was one of those people that barely slept, drank far too much coffee and just kept writing and campaigning tirelessly day and night. He really believed he could change the world -maybe he was deluded- but I do think that he had great motivation, and that sort of motivation combined with energy is an inspirational pairing. It doesn’t matter when he lived or who he was, that combination is what you need to fuse together in order to be able to implement change and get things done in life.
Rhodes Project: Can you tell me about some of your research on Voltaire?
Síofra Pierse: My research on Voltaire typically focuses on his intellectual side more than on his campaigning side. But I have written on numerous aspects of his work, including on doubt and lies in the eighteenth century, because I’m very interested in concepts of historical scepticism, of historiography, and of the impossibility of truth, and how these affect the writing of history and our interpretation of history, including dealing with historical false news. Are we story-telling, or re-inventing the past? Are we re-writing it? There are so many ways to look at history that it becomes mesmerizing. This is one of the salient aspects of the more intellectual side of Voltaire’s writings. His active and proactive thoughts reveal a hugely theoretical side, but it is his activism and his successes as an active campaigner for justice and fairness that I really admire the most.
Rhodes Project: Can you share a memorable teaching moment?
Síofra Pierse: Part of the pleasure of teaching is that there have been many memorable moments in many ways over many years. I love teaching, especially audience responses. When a whole lecture theatre of three hundred students laugh because they’ve had a “eureka” moment and they realize that something makes sudden sense, or they are identifying with a character, or having some other learning experience, it can be magical. Then there have been invaluable moments with individual students. For example, a student who has great self-doubt can be coaxed to produce an amazing masterpiece. We might end up spending a year working on alleviating their self-doubt rather than expanding their academic material, and then we wonder what on earth they are going to write. Then having started with the most stuttering draft, by the end of the year they produce this lyrical, passionate, literate, brilliant piece. You realize that imparting information or conveying ideas is not what teaching is about, it’s often simply about guiding, and connecting with, the person, or even just about boosting morale. Each student brings her/his own riches into any academic encounter.
Rhodes Project: Do you ever do any theatre?
Síofra Pierse: I am a firm believer in theatre as a life genre. I know it’s not necessarily very fashionable at the moment amongst university students now that we all have our noses buried in our screens, but Dublin has an amazing theatre festival every autumn. During the Covid pandemic theatre was something that only partially transferred online, because nothing replicates a live audience. The annual autumnal Dublin Theatre Festival is one of the most vibrant moments in Dublin’s social existence, and this festival invites all types of international companies to come over. Along with the Film Festival, the Dublin Theatre Festival is definitely one the highlights of the cultural year here. Companies bring very cutting-edge, experimental productions, to which we might not normally be exposed. I talk to a great deal with my students about theatre and performance, as well as stage or screen adaptations. Since I began working at university level, I have been involved in a lot of student theatre – always from the director’s position. Even as an undergraduate, I always worked as a director or on lighting, since I like casting a critical eye from outside the show. I enjoy encouraging and guiding people to be the best version of themselves they can possibly be: maybe this is again linked to my love of teaching. I also think it’s a great way for students to come into themselves and to (re)gain a lot of confidence. We had a student who lost his mother mid-production once, and he found the theatre performance to be an extremely supportive framework within which to work through his grief. He could have pulled out, but instead everyone rallied around him and the production itself formed a sort of cocoon. Theatre can be used as an academic tool, too. It’s a great way of entering the text rather than simply reading it. Theatre as an educational tool is really without equal.
What I find nowadays in college is that students are retreating behind the invisibility of their phone screens. They don’t meet or participate so spontaneously anymore. They’re shy, which is not good for their presentation skills, their wellbeing, or their self-confidence. We can’t hide behind a screen in life! I find that to be a worrying aspect of life right now. We all need to step forward to be public people, to perform citizenship, and to dare to pronounce things, particularly where there are societal or political problems. I think theatre is a great way to promote social engagement because it allows students to start off by pronouncing other people’s words and then gives them the confidence to come up with their own words and ideas later. My students are the politicians, lawyers, lecturers and human rights advocates of the future. They are citizens who will need to speak publicly and defend their values and their beliefs loudly, confidently and strongly. It’s important for society that people don’t just shirk that responsibility and avoid a public presence. It’s important that students and people in society more generally learn to articulate their message in real life and in real time, whatever that message may be.
Rhodes Project: What aspect of your job do you enjoy most?
Síofra Pierse: I am a lifelong academic, which means that my job is also my passion. While academia was one of the first spaces where women fought for equality, it is disappointing that this fight has not yet been won, even in academia. The playing pitch is absolutely not yet even, in a privileged space where it could be so much better. Nonetheless, my favourite part of my academic life has to be lecturing, I really enjoy it. I love teaching each new generation and whatever the topic –whether French Language, literature, history of ideas, language, history, early modern female authors or Voltaire– just opening students’ eyes to new horizons. This generation of students is as exciting as any. As usual, the top students can teach themselves, of course they can, and they always will, but most of our students need a little guidance on how to even begin to analyse the enormity of information to which they now have access.
Our students also appreciate finally becoming specialists in something. I love seeing students arrive in first year to study Modern Languages, and then watching them leave four years later as different people. They have renewed interest and passion in life, they have a linguistic skill, they are experts in a culture that is typically not their own, and they have learned critical thinking; they have found their own niche and I love that we, as lecturers and teachers, have played at least a little part in guiding those individuals. We like to think that we made a difference. It’s an honour and a privilege to be a lecturer, to set the stage for each incoming cohort. I feel that it’s important for students to have access to good teachers, communicators and educators, in the hope that they will become even greater specialists themselves in time. Most of all, I love that our work in the Humanities expands a space that permits students to cultivate and maintain their critical eye. What we offer is a life-long training in how to live your own best possible version of active existence.
Rhodes Project: What aspect of your job do you enjoy the least?
Síofra Pierse: Ireland, as a postcolonial space, has never been the richest country in western Europe, so a lot of difficult financial choices always need to be made at all levels. I have serious difficulties with the government’s current policies in relation to the Humanities in general, not just languages. There’s a biased rhetoric that is pro-science and nearly anti-humanities, which is both disappointing and dangerous. The world needs all sorts of specialists, but what we also need are people who are articulate thinkers and philosophers. We need people who can push us forward and think our way into the future. Most of these future-facing people –strategic and lateral thinkers- typically come from the Humanities or from people with some sort of training in or exposure to the Humanities. Our university system in Ireland consists of public universities which are directly funded by the government. So, government policy has a huge impact on the ground at university level, which can be extremely frustrating. Yes, we are cogs in the wheel, but the people turning the wheel are not listening to the cogs on the ground. We need a lot of financial support, and we’re not getting it! That is not a good way of dealing with either the economic downturn or the country’s current and future intellectual health.
Rhodes Project: If you had unlimited resources to address one local issue, what would it be and why?
Síofra Pierse: I would change the Irish system of childcare. Having noted that all of our universities are public, all of our childcare is privatized. Essentially, the private care system in Ireland is rotten to the core. Even two professionals working in two good jobs spend an inordinate percentage of their after-tax salary on childcare. I would suspect that it’s probably one of the most expensive in Europe. There is no general public-funded system for childcare in Ireland, which is a really negative situation where the country is trying to encourage women to enter the workplace and become fully participative and productive or successful professionals. It is impossible to do that without having childcare provided, essentially nationwide. I’m in a lucky position because I could pay for private childcare, but I have friends and neighbours who can’t. In their families, the women are obliged to take unpaid parental leave, or a leave of absence from work, or to give up their entire career so that they can look after their small children. Some mothers do that as a choice but for many Irish women there is no choice – or at least not a real one. They’ve been pushed into it for financial reasons and due to lack of governmental or community support. With young children, it is one of the most vulnerable moments in any mother’s life – you have the least energy, the least time and the fuzziest head. You can make some really bad decisions based on an absolutely gorgeous bundle of joy that has just arrived into your life. I wouldn’t want any woman to regret the decision that she made in giving up a career or a job or whatever it is that she didn’t want to give up completely just because there was no adequate childcare option available to her in this country.
Rhodes Project: What do you like to do to relax?
Síofra Pierse: I am a tennis player! I am part of Donnybrook Lawn Tennis Club in Dublin ever since I arrived here. I play medium-level competitive interclub league matches and I just love it. It’s sociable, very relaxing and it’s a great way of keeping fit. I mostly play doubles, especially in competitions. It’s just wonderful; I can completely forget everything when I am on the tennis court . I also, obviously, read quite a lot. Most of the time I read either biographies, historical novels or contemporary fiction, mainly well-written, entirely escapist novels across a few languages. I do a tiny bit of DIY but my real hobbies are reading and tennis.
Rhodes Project: What brings you joy in life?
Síofra Pierse: My little boy Cian and all the wonderful pleasure he has brought to our family. It was just two of us -both academics- for a very long time and that was exciting and sometimes whirlwind- but having a third creates a very nice family unit that has brought us roots. Cian is now 12 years old and he remains an inveterate optimist. We brought him up multilingual, speaking Irish, English and French. Since he was tiny, he always wakes up in the morning bursting with optimism, happiness and hugs. He is also incredible sympathetic and when a family friend moved into a Care home with very early onset dementia, he was the first in the door to visit her. That sort of human empathy is so important for promoting wellbeing. During my sabbatical years we brought our son to live in Paris, France, and it’s magical to see that wherever he is, he just loves life. He certainly makes the world quite magical for everyone around him! I also derive great pleasure from my academic research. But I particularly love people. I have some very old friends including some super friends from when I was in Oxford, some of them Rhodes Projects and more friends from Trinity or from the gang who did Modern Languages. Many of us have kept in touch over the years and meet up sporadically, and that is really special too. I have wonderful friends here in Dublin. I think friends are really important whether you’re arguing about childcare over the dinner table, or you’re just going for a walk with a friend who needs a bit of support or you’re puffing up a mountain-top in Wicklow (Irish countryside south of Dublin) for a communal picnic! Most of my friends happen to be women, for some reason, but they comprise a complete mixture: I have tennis friends, mama friends, academic friends, intellectual friends, and lots of other long-distance friends from all over the world. It’s fabulous to see how we all negotiate life across the decades. What you choose to do in your spare time and with your money, how you help people less fortunate than you, what you believe in and how you formulate your values: all of these discussions are enriched by those simple catch-up chats that I love to snatch in whatever city and whenever or wherever in the world I happen to manage to meet up with an old friend. Such wonderful friends will continue to help me to figure out when to stand up and when to stay schtum: the two most important things in life.
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