Global Irish Studies Receives Gift from Healey Family Foundation for Visiting Fellowship
Jeremy Healey (C’95) has a lifelong love of Irish culture and Irish studies.
When Healey, the chief executive officer of Carbon Limit, was a student at Georgetown University double majoring in English and theology with a concentration in biblical studies, he studied Irish literature extensively. He read and researched work by Irish poet W.B. Yeats and also studied abroad in Galway, Ireland.
Healey’s experience at Georgetown inspired him to make a recent gift to Georgetown’s Global Irish Studies Initiative (GIS) in the College of Arts & Sciences establishing the Healey Family Distinguished Fellow in Global Irish Studies Endowed Fund. The gift comes from the Healey Family Foundation, which supports the philanthropy of Thomas J. (C’64) and Meg Healey, their daughter and son-in-law Megan and John Hagerty, and their son, Jeremy and his wife, Megan Healey (C’95).
“What Global Irish Studies has been building out is in some ways a microcosm of a lot of the work that the College is engaged in broadly,” Jeremy Healey said. “One part of that is the focus on humanities as an interdisciplinary concept.”
The endowed fund will bring a new visiting fellow to Georgetown for one semester each academic year, starting in the Spring 2027 semester. The Healey Family Distinguished Fellow will be someone working in the field of literature and the arts who will teach an undergraduate course of their choosing on contemporary Irish writing and culture in the Department of English.
“Global Irish Studies is already a jewel within the College of Arts & Sciences,” said David Edelstein, the dean of the College. “It is innovative, global and interdisciplinary — all the best of what the College aspires to be. Adding the Healey Family Distinguished Fellow will only enhance the program to the benefit of our entire community, especially our students. We are enormously grateful to the Healey family for enabling our teaching and research in this important area.”
‘A Huge Audience’
There is an enormous thirst for contemporary Irish writing in DC, said Cóilín Parsons, an associate professor of English and one of the founding directors of Global Irish Studies.
“You could call it the Sally Rooney effect, or even the Derry Girls effect; it’s very popular,” he said. “There’s a huge audience, and we are delighted that Georgetown is able to bring this to a DC audience.”
Since its founding nine years ago, GIS has hosted award-winning Irish writers on campus and virtually during the pandemic, including Colm Tóibín, Fintan O’Toole, Tana French, Roddy Doyle, Sinéad Morrissey, Jan Carson, Lucy Caldwell, Colum McCann, Sinéad Gleeson and Caoilinn Hughes.
The Global Irish Studies program, in partnership with Solas Nua, invited award-winning writer Sinéad Gleeson to Georgetown in September of 2025.
Healey himself attended a GIS webinar in 2021 that celebrated Joseph M. Hassett’s book, Yeats Now: Echoing into Life. The panel session was moderated by Parsons and featured actor Lisa Dwan; singer Tara Erraught; poets Paula Meehan and Teri Ellen Cross Davis; and Daniel Mulhall, then the Ambassador of Ireland to the United States.
“It gave me enormous respect for what Cóilín was building out with the Global Irish Studies program,” Healey said.
The visiting fellow will build on the work being done.
“Essentially what they’re being offered is an opportunity to come and spend time to write, while engaging with our students here on campus and also the wider community of readers across DC,” Parsons said. “We envisage this as very much a public-facing appointment.”
That includes working closely with the Embassy of Ireland, USA and with arts organizations in DC like Solas Nua, a multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to contemporary Irish arts.
“The aim of Global Irish Studies, among other things, is to bring the best of Ireland and Irish ideas to Georgetown, and to bring to Ireland the best of Georgetown,” Parsons said. “So this is the perfect match between our goals as an organization and Jeremy Healey’s desire to support contemporary Irish literature.”
Investing in the Future
As GIS approaches its 10-year anniversary, students can expect even more ambitious collaborations that will unlock the global potential of Global Irish Studies at Georgetown, said Darragh Gannon, the director of Global Irish Studies for the 2026-27 academic year.
“The Healey Family Foundation is a prestigious partner which shares our new vision for the future,” he said. “We are delighted to work with Jeremy Healey, a proud GU alum, to advance the next generation of Irish studies at Georgetown.”
The visiting fellow in Global Irish Studies exemplifies the College’s interdisciplinary focus.
Healey, whose children have studied at Georgetown, said he sees the courses taught by the future visiting fellows as an extension of the experiences offered to students in the College of Arts & Sciences. He cited, as an example, First-Year Seminars, which are small, discussion-based courses offered to all first-year students that are designed to introduce them to the intellectual community of the College.
Global Irish Studies Fellows celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses with the Ambassador of Ireland to the United States, Geraldine Byrne-Nason (center) in 2023. Cóilín Parsons is pictured on the right.
Georgetown, Healey said, has a unique ability to convene the community of DC that no other institution has.
Beyond the classroom, the fellow will make their work available to the broader Georgetown and DC communities through public lectures, talks, readings or performances.
“We’re really looking forward to having the opportunity to identify and support the best of emerging and established Irish writers and giving them a warm Georgetown welcome,” Parsons said.