Trinity News

Trinity News is hiring Executive Editors for 2026/2027. For full application guidelines and more information, please visit our website at the link in our bio. Applications are open now and close on Monday the 18th of May. For any queries please contact [email protected] 📸 @neasaniccorcrain

89 new Scholars were announced by the provost this morning, as Trinity Monday celebrations kicked off.  Provost Dr Linda Doyle also named 22 new fellows from the university’s academic staff, seven professorial fellows and two honorary fellows. Click the link in our bio to read more. 📸: @neasaniccorcrain

On 18 April 2026, the first census conducted under the Irish Free State will be released and made freely searchable online. Its publication marks 100 years since it was undertaken by the Department of Industry and Commerce and enumerated by 2,000 members of the newly established Garda Síochána who visited the length and breadth of the country, collecting 700,000 individual household returns. As the first census carried out by the newly established Irish Free State post-British rule, it is a significant milestone. It will offer us a glimpse into life in Ireland 100 years ago, a snapshot into a nation which was in its infancy, tentatively finding its feet. Orlaith MacBride, National Archives of Ireland Director and Trinity alumna, sat down with Trinity News to speak about the scale of the work that went into making this census accessible to the public. Click the link in our bio to read more. 📸: National Library of Ireland

Here’s what you missed this week in Trinity News. Make sure to head to our website through the link in bio to read all of these stories and more 🗞️ Video by Isabella Hanlon (@isabellahanlon_ ) Edited and filmed by Gordii Kodubovskyi (@thegordii )

Following the TCDSU Trinity Ball Battle of the Bands on March 25, Dublin-based band Llama Cult secured themselves a spot on this year’s T-Ball lineup, performing at 9pm on the Fellow’s Square stage. Llama Cult is a five-piece folk band hailing from Dublin, originating from songwriting duo Karl Tuohy and Donagh Kelly, who met in 2018. Since the band began in 2022, they boast an impressive 60+ songs written. Gradually, the band grew to include Norah Stevens on violin, Eoin Roebuck on electric guitar, and Daniel Dennehy on drums, each musician bringing something different to the table, expanding the band’s eclectic and original sound. Click the link in our bio to read more. 📸: @jimenasgallery

That time of year has rolled around again – the sun is shining past 6pm, exams are just far enough away for you to not concern yourself with them, and preparations are well underway for the biggest bash of the year – TBall. Girls, get those dresses ready. Lads, brush off that tux that was forgotten about after the Big Fat Trinity Wedding, it’s time to get dressed up for Europe’s biggest private party! Doors open at 9pm, with acts performing from then. It normally goes on till about 2:30am, with the main stage act going on around 1-1:30am. There are three stages: the Main Stage in front of the Campanile, one in Fellows Square (in front of the Arts Block) and another in Botany Bay tennis courts. There are also a few bars and some food trucks dotted across the campus to visit throughout the night – beware that the lines are long though! Click the link in our bio to read more.

Fuel price protesters have entered their third day of protests. The protesters will be meeting with the Irish government at 2PM today, claiming that a blockade will be maintained until their demands are met. 📸: Nadia Caimi

Grease certainly was the word in this year’s JCR (Junior Common Room) musical production under the stewardship of Roberta Milazzo, who just last year was living in Trinity Hall and operating as co-leader of costume design. In case anyone is unfamiliar with the concept, TCD’s only accommodation geared towards first-year students hosts an annual musical performance in their Sports Hall, whose cast is selected predominantly from its residents. When working with talented, yet mostly untrained actors, one of the best things you can amp up in your performance is the pure, unbridled joy and passion for the craft, which only shines brighter when the songs and story are familiar to the audience. And shine these first years did, greased and oiled in the stage lights, directed by Olivia Maguire, who the year before experienced the glee of performing in The Addams Family. Click the link in our bio to read more. 📸: Courtesy of JCR

Did you fall asleep scrolling Instagram Reels or TikTok last night? I am sure most of us would say yes. However, as we know it’s never too late to learn, the often-overlooked effects of blue light exposure. Looking back at our history, humans evolved with a natural day-night cycle as there were no devices, and the concept of screen time did not exist. Now the question arises: why blue light specifically, and how does it affect the body? The wavelength of blue light ranges from 460 to 480 nm, detected by specialised retinal photoreceptor cells in our eyes. These cells in turn signal the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain which is responsible for controlling the circadian rhythm. Click the link in our bio to read more.

On the afternoon of March 5th, seventeen speakers took to the stage at the Dargan Theatre in Trinity Business School for TEDxTrinityCollegeDublin. The lineup was formidable: a Lamborghini racing driver turned entrepreneur, a psychotherapist with two bestselling books, a professor with a €2 million European Research Council grant, and an associate professor whose fieldwork has taken them from the Lakota Nations to the Sundarbans. The theme was Change101 — a riff on the introductory university course format — asking what challenges would define the next century It started with a link in the Laidlaw group chat. From there, it was a matter of who had the research and the inclination to apply. Click the link in our bio to read more. 📸: Fennell Photography

The Trinity Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) student group and Trinity College Dublin Students' Union (TCDSU/AMLCT) have dropped banners next to the college Front Gate calling for an end to the Columbia University Dual BA. A central banner displaying the words “End the Columbia Dual BA”, flagged on either side by two others reading “Cut all ties with apartheid and genocide”, was dropped from a House 6 window facing onto College Green earlier today. The Dual BA programme, which has been running since 2017, allows students to complete one half of their studies at Trinity before completing them at Columbia University in New York, receiving separate batchelors degrees from both upon graduating. Columbia University has similar programmes in place with universities in France, Hong Kong and Israel. Click the link in our bio to read more. 📸: TCDSU/AMLCT and Trinity BDS

More than 400 academics and other university staff have signed a letter addressed to Taoiseach Micheál Martin to express their “deep concern” over the Government’s attempts to remove the triple lock, a move which would lower the requirements for the Irish government to deploy troops overseas. One signatory told Trinity News that approximately 70 academic and administrative staff and researchers from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) have signed the letter. Introduced in 2001, the triple lock describes a legal mechanism which prevents Ireland from deploying more than 12 Irish soldiers abroad for peacekeeping missions unless those missions have been granted a mandate from the United Nations (UN). The letter to the Taoiseach describes the proposed removal of the triple lock as “abandoning the Irish State’s long-held commitment to […] international law”. The 2025 Defence (Amendment) Bill, which would allow the government to deploy Irish Defence Forces on missions led by “any other regional arrangement or body”, has undergone pre-legislative scrutiny and is now due before the Dáil imminently. Click the link in our bio to read more.