Slouching is not an option for those seated in the meeting room of the Royal Irish Academy. The wooden benches, originally from the Irish House of Lords, are unrelenting in their insistence on spinal rectitude.
The books that line the meeting room walls (the uppermost volumes reached via a mezzanine floor) have been diligently accumulated since the academy first gathered in 1785. The adjoining library, with its outstanding collection of manuscripts and books, and its hushed atmosphere, is a scholar's dream. The sense of having stepped back in time is marred only by the whir of a photocopier and a blinking cursor on one of the two computer screens.
Newly appointed RIA treasurer Professor Michael Ryan dispenses coffee in the member's room of number 19 Dawson Street, Dublin, an elegant Georgian house that became home to the academy in 1852. Portraits of past RIA presidents, all male, stare gloomily from their gilded frames. Ryan introduces some of them: Reverend Samuel Haughton, doctor, anatomist and mathematician, a "humanitarian who was appalled by incompetent public executions and devised a humane hanging method"; John Charles Ingram LLD; General Charles Vallancy, who takes pride of place over the mantelpiece.
The membership list today extends to almost 300 people (membership is a jealously guarded privilege) with women severely under-represented, although Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson are among the elect. There is no application process - it is, rather, a matter of being chosen. The sole criterion is quality of scholarship. Twelve new members are elected each year.
This type of society may seem somewhat anachronistic and irrelevant in the 21st century, a Georgian or Victorian reminder of the days before Ireland was a republic, when scholars were clergymen or gentlemen's second sons (the first women members were elected in 1949). After all, when the academy was set up, there was only one university in Ireland and a society for "promoting the study of science, polite literature and antiquities" filled a void. Today, Ireland has a burgeoning academic community, housed in numerous universities, colleges and institutes of technology throughout the State (although to look through the membership list of the RIA, some of these might as well not exist). And scholarship is open to everyone, male or female, aristocratic or not.
Michael Ryan is having none of it. The academy still plays an active part in Irish academic life. He reels off a list of current projects, from the 10-volume New History of Ireland, to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, Focl≤ir na Nua Ghaeilge, the definitive Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic sources, the Dictionary of Irish Biography, and a series of documents on Irish foreign policy since 1922.
Then there's the "huge multi-disciplinary survey" of Clare Island and the genetic history and geography of Ireland. Research funding, prizes, participation in national and international committees, publication of monographs. Through participation in a project called "Irish Script on Screen", the RAI will digitise Lebor na hUidre, the Great Book of Lecan, the Annals of the Four Masters and a range of Irish literary, medical and other works (www.ICOS.duc.ie).
Urbane, erudite, downright charming, Ryan makes a convincing case for the continued existence, and, perhaps, expansion, of the RIA.
Ryan hails from Skerries, Co Dublin. He still lives there. The youngest of seven children, his father was a civil servant and his mother was a secondary teacher. His schooling in the local Holy Faith convent and the De la Salle Brothers' college was during "the dull 1950s", although he singles out two of the brothers, Malachy and Fergus, as a source of inspiration.
UCD, in the mid-1960s was a different matter. "I went to UCD in 1964 to fulfill a long-held ambition to study archaeology. It was terrific. I loved it, although I was too young. I went to college before my 17th birthday.
"UCD in Earlsford Terrace was a very exciting place. I've never been able to think of Belfield as the same university. It was wildly under-resourced, and any self-respecting fire officer would have closed the place down on a Friday morning when three vast lectures disgorged hundreds of student, who were then jammed in the corridor for 20 minutes."
Ryan studied archaeology, early Irish history and English, which he dropped after first year. "Lectures from Liam de Paor were absolute masterpieces of exposition and elegance. I held Ruairi de Valera in a fair amount of awe . . . a terrific subtle mind. George Eogan was among my teachers." His MA thesis was on "soutteraine ware, ugly early medieval pottery, with minimal decoration".
He went to NUI Galway (then UCG) to lecture for a year, and then joined the National Museum in 1970. "I stayed there for 22 years. I went to Frank Mitchell in TCD to do a PhD. It was there that I learned how to work. I got a wake-up call from Frank. He would come in, make a few pithy comments, and then, a few months later, I'd get a phone call, taking up exactly where we had left off. He was pretty rigorous but with a light rein."
The PhD was on the Derrynaflan Chalice and its context. "I though I'd be a prehistorian, but in the national museum you become a generalist."
Ryan is the director and librarian of the Chester Beatty Library. He is also chairman of the Discovery programme, a State-funded archaeological institution. In recent years, the programme has concentrated on the archaeology and environment of later prehistoric Ireland, with major research projects on the Hill of Tara, the western stone forts, the north Munster region and the Ballyhoura hills.
The proposed new strategic plan for the RIA is likely to take up a lot of his time and energy. "I was elected treasurer in April and most of my time has been taken up with the strategic review process. It's a very comprehensive review, looking at the academy, its role, operations, structure and relationships. We polled members with a questionnaire and we have got a terrific response.
"We hope to have a report by spring next year. We're trying to take a comprehensive look at the academy and its relationship with the wider world. It's very exciting if slightly nerve-wracking."
If that's not enough, Ryan is currently editing a collection of his papers on early Irish art, to be published in book format. But he is too busy to finish his biography of Sir William Wilde . . . "it's likely to become a retirement project," he says, wryly. The RIA's original motto, We will endeavour, might be a useful source of comfort.
The Academy
Founded: the Royal Irish Academy was founded in 1785 to promote the study of science, polite literature and antiquities.
Home: splendid Georgian house on Dawson Street, Dublin.
Crowning jewel: the library. Its collection of about 2,000 manuscripts includes the oldest surviving Irish manuscript, the Cathach, or Psalter of St Columba.
The members: include the president of Ireland Mary McAleese; past-president of Ireland and
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson
Funding: mainly from the Higher Education Authority
The website: www.ria.ie
