About

Ciarán Walsh set up www.curator.ie in 2010 and works from his home in Ballyheigue, County Kerry.

A graduate of NCAD (1984), he completed a PhD (Anthropology) in 2020 and resumed work as a freelance curator and writer. Recent curatorial projects include archivist/curator in Donegal County Council Archives Service (2022) and curator of The Bolex Boys exhibition in Kerry Writers’ Museum (2023). Between 2012 and 2023 he worked with Marie Coyne, Director of Inishbofin Heritage Museum, on the return and burial of the ‘stolen skulls of Inishbofin’, the remains of thirteen ancestors stolen in 1890 and held in the Anatomy Museum in TCD since 1892.

Since 2020, Walsh has developed a series of journalistic and cross-over academic projects designed to engage the general public with issues raised by his research. These projects include blogs and podcasts for RTÉ BRAINSTORM (2020-22) and the inside story in the Irish Examiner (2023) of the return and burial of the Inishbofin remains. Dearcán Media profiled his work on Inishbofin for a feature documentary due for release on TG4 and BBC in the spring of 2024.

Berghahn Books (New York, Oxford) published Alfred Cort Haddon, A Very English Savage in October 2023. Walsh co-curated the Haddon and the Aran Islands exhibition in the Royal Anthropological Institute to set the scene for the book launch and to exhibit – for the first time ever – photographs featured in the book alongside photographs that put these in context. The exhibition runs until February 2024. He is currently developing an online component for A Very English Savage on the Ballymaclinton blog site.