Five Ports on the Irish Sea

The Irish Sea basin forms a distinct node of histories, economies, and identities. This project considers five very different ports and their communities on either side of the sea: Dublin, Rosslare, Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock. Each port is unique in its history, identity, and environs and yet belongs to an Irish sea region with a shared story. Those connections are often occluded or divided by national, regulatory, and narrative boundaries stretching back many centuries.

The stories of the region are both created from and supersede these boundaries, spanning the water and stretching far into the wider stories of Wales and the wider United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and a dense confluence of European and global connections linked by the mediating membrane of ocean-going trade routes and infrastructures. The coasts tell and have told stories on a dazzling variety of scales, from the local and the individual to the shared stories of communities to sweeping transoceanic arcs and networks.