On Friday, 4 December, 2015, family, friends, former colleagues and students of Liam Ryan, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Maynooth University, gathered on campus to celebrate his life and his outstanding contribution to the discipline of Sociology, to the University and to Irish society. Liam passed away in May 2015.
A Limerick man, hurler, story teller, priest, writer and local historian, Liam's lengthy career at Maynooth coincided with the development of the University as a secular institution and the flourishing of the social sciences.
“The outpouring of goodwill toward Liam has been overwhelming,” noted Professor Mary P. Corcoran, Head of the Department of Sociology, who along with colleagues Dr. Brian Conway and Dr. Colin Coulter organised the celebratory event.
“It is clear that Liam touched many lives in ways that left an indelible mark. We were delighted with the response to the event and the willingness of people to share their memories,” she said. A collection of reflections and reminiscences of Liam’s life was launched at the event.
The President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins has noted that Liam was informed by “a passionate social ethic and a peerless intellect. He possessed all of the skills and knowledge of the finest empirical social scientists, for sociology for Liam was never a mere abstract discipline. He approached the subject from the perspective of a deep concern for what he could see happening in our communities and might be amenable to change. His work on early school leaving and social housing in his native Limerick remains as important and as relevant now as it did 50 years ago.”
Former President of Maynooth University, Professor Tom Collins, who studied under Liam recalled Liam as “an intellectual anti-hero who did not so much interrogate the claims of alternative belief systems as dismiss them each in turn with an ironic remark or a perfectly directed barb. He brought an intellectual scepticism to all assertions, enhancing its impact with a beguiling and occasionally withering wit.”
In a similar vein, Tony Fahey, former student and colleague and now Professor of Social Policy at UCD, writes, “It was Liam’s ability to see a topic in his idiosyncratic and compelling way and talk plainly about it in tones that could range from the sombre to the sardonic to the outrageously funny that captivated me as a student and that stayed with me ever since as a model of what one could do if one only one had the wit and brainpower.”
Eileen Kane, who along with Liam set up the Anthropology Department at Maynooth University, recalled that “Liam was many things—humble, generous, obliging to a fault, and a very gifted sportsman…coupled with an unflappable nature and droll humour.”
Mary B. Ryan of the Adult and Community Education Department at Maynooth University recalled how she learned from Liam “that to be human is to be vulnerable, to have the capacity for hope and disappointment, love and loss. He embodied the discomfort of occupying the insider-outsider position and the challenge in making the familiar unfamiliar.”