Interview with BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington: Part Two

Micheline enjoying some urban botany
 on a post-industrial site in Wales
Image: L. Marsh

In Part One of our interview with BSBI President Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, we heard about her early days botanising and studying in Dublin, in France and then in the Indonesian tropical rainforest, but by 1985, with her PhD under her belt, she was back in Ireland as lecturer in plant ecology in the Botany Department of then-named University College Galway, UCG (now University of Galway).

LM: So Micheline, what happened next?

MSS: On returning from my year in Indonesia, I resumed my lectures and soon took on my first postgraduate student, Lieveke Van Doorslaer, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. With the aim of helping conservation, we worked with Connemara National Park, Director Dr Noel Kirby who suggested we study the enigmatic Lusitanian heather Erica mackaiana, so widespread on Roundstone Bog. Using old 1870s OS maps, Lieveke’s extremely careful mapping of species and hybrid at its known sites, led to our suspicions that it might not be native. In fact, a paper sent to BSBI’s then scientific journal Watsonia was rejected on the basis that fossil leaves had been found in the Boreal era! This began my long on-going interest in Hiberno-Lusitanian species - and we did eventually publish the E. mackaiana paper in New Journal of Botany.

LM: I remember it well, we published the paper in 2016! It’s now available to BSBI members via the password-protected members’ area of the BSBI website (email me if you’re a member and you’ve forgotten your password or if you'd like to join BSBI and gain access). So what else were you doing at this point?

Micheline botanising in Connemara

MSS: As well as postgrad work on rare plant species (for example with John Conaghan, now BSBI County Recorder for West Galway, who researched the ecology of Slender Cotton-grass Eriophorum gracile and Broad-leaved Cotton-grass E. latifolium in Ireland), I soon realised that farming and farmers were critical to nature conservation and much of my subsequent postgrad and postdoc research focused on sustainable agriculture in Connemara as well as in the Burren, linked to its Farming for Conservation Programme. We also worked with farmers on conservation management in the fascinating ephemeral lakes, or turloughs, that abound in the Galway region - and, of course, on the River Shannon flood-meadows, or callows. Many of my postgrads are now highly-esteemed consultants or in senior conservation posts in National Parks and Wildlife Service, which is very nice to see; several are BSBI County Recorders! We have many papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals.

Micheline and family members
 at the High Court, May 2017

LM: That is an impressive list of publications! And then of course many people will be aware of your long but ultimately successful struggle for gender equality in academia. Could you tell us about that please?

MSS: Well as far back as 2000, I made my first bid for Senior Lecturer. Little did I know then that there was a very thick, opaque glass ceiling above me that took a sledge hammer to smash! By 2009, I had applied four times but was told that, though I was shortlisted for the second time (and therefore deemed suitable), I was not ranked in the top 17 who were promoted. When I asked how many of the 17 were women, the Registrar checked, paused and then said ‘One’. To cut a long story short, I made a cogent case to the Equality Tribunal on the grounds of gender discrimination, gaining access to all the anonymised shortlisted applications -and won in November 2014! But I knew that five other women were also better qualified than some of those men and the women eventually filed suit with the High Court and Workplace Relations Commission, so we mounted a four-year campaign in their support. 

Micheline and Rose Foley, finalising the book

Because this dragged on, it had positive national effects. For example, by 2018 when the university finally settled with the women, the Higher Education Authority had made funding for all third-level institutions contingent on getting an Athena SWAN award. So people felt this story needed to be documented, and journalist friend Rose Foley, who had been in the campaign since the start, was ideally placed to do this. 

Five long years of writing, interviews and research later, our book finally came out late in 2023! A cracking good read, it’s an important and insightful account of university politics and how winning against all odds is possible. It is in bookshops in Ireland and Britain, but also here on the campaign website, where the details of the campaign are also chronicled.

LM: Hurrah! And there (on the right) is the front cover of the book, called Micheline's Three Conditions. Although I suppose that as the grand-daughter of one of Ireland’s most famous suffragettes, we shouldn’t be surprised that you were so tenacious in your fight for equality! Could you tell us something please about your family heritage?   

MSS: I like to say I come from a long line of jailbirds and troublemakers! My grandmother, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was probably Ireland’s most prominent suffragette and went to prison and hunger struck in the struggle for Votes for Women. When she married her husband, Francis Skeffington, they each took each other’s name to become the Sheehy Skeffingtons, as he himself was a staunch feminist. So, when I took my case, I felt I owed it to them and indeed my parents, to stand up to injustice. They were socialists, as well as wanting Irish independence, but Frank especially was a militant pacifist and was executed without trial during the 1916 Easter Rising by a British army officer, arguably as a result of his outspoken anti-militarism. My father, Owen, carried on their tradition and became an independent Senator, elected by Trinity College Dublin alumni. My mother, Andrée, co-founded the radical Irish Housewives Association and campaigned for price control of basic foods during the difficult 1940s and 50s. So, I had quite a legacy to uphold!

LM: Micheline, congratulations on all that you have managed to achieve for women in academia! You have also held several other high- profile roles, such as your ministerial appointment to the Heritage Council, serving on its Wildlife Committee from 1995 to 2000, and you have also served on the Advisory Board for the Burren LIFE project. Could you tell us more about these roles and how you were able to promote the causes of habitat conservation and sustainable agriculture?

Micheline and President Michael D. Higgins
during the 1916 Rising celebrations

MSS: I was one of the appointees of one Minister Michael D. Higgins to the Heritage Council, which had several committees, including Waterways, Archaeology, Architecture and Wildlife. There was a radical bunch of us on the Wildlife Committee. The Council is in an advisory capacity to the Minister and the Wildlife Committee commissioned key reports on the impact of agriculture and of forestry on the Irish environment; a comprehensive review of conservation designations in Ireland, as well as the much-used Guide to the Habitats of Ireland compiled by the late much-missed Julie Fossitt. We organised an international conference on Burren low-intensity farming that tapped into Brendan Dunford’s work. He then set up the Burren Farming for Conservation Programme, as it became, which has been one of the most successful EU LIFE projects, winning international awards. 

Micheline in Uganda

It was a privilege to serve on their advisory board and I also learned a lot about farming for conservation there. I also served as Council member of the international Tropical Biology Association (which I was keen to support because it helps train up young biologists in Africa and Asia, alongside a bunch of European students who help subsidise them. I taught on one course in Uganda, where I learned so much about its habitats, flora and fauna. Of course, I served many spells on the BSBI Committee for Ireland, including as Chair.

LM: So when had you joined BSBI and how did that come about?

MSS: As very new Botany graduates, myself and two classmates heard of a BSBI outing to the Aran Islands. Having spent time there learning Irish, I have a great affinity for the islands, and we enthusiastically boarded the small plane bound for Inis Mór. We learned about it, as our Professor D.A. Webb and Maura Scannell wanted to fill in gaps for their Flora of Connemara and the Burren. An illustrious group attended, including Mary (M.P.H.) Kertland, Éanna Ní Lamhna and of course Tim Robinson, recently moved to Inis Mór from England, who was mapping every corner and field of the islands and guided us round sites. ‘The students’ were credited with locating the Sea-kale Crambe maritima site on the beach there! I continued to join BSBI outings, getting more involved as a postgrad in the late 1970s and serving on the Committee for Ireland from 1981. 

Micheline and Mary Briggs
(BSBI's first female President)
at the 1995 BSBI AGM in Ireland

It was while chairing this in 1993-5, that I co-ordinated the first-ever BSBI AGM in Ireland. In fact, the previous year, in 1994, I had invited Tim Robinson to talk about the Roundstone Bog heathers and, as he rarely left the confines of Connemara, he persuaded me to organise the Irish AGM in Roundstone! That whimsical paper was published in the 1995 Irish Botanical News. Tim and his wife Mairéad became firm friends and we miss them very much.

LM: Ah yes, I was browsing BSBI News back-issues the other day and in the Reports of Field Meetings from this issue (on page 65) I can see that Sylvia Reynolds thanks you for “so ably organizing the AGM in Dublin”. So, you became increasingly active in BSBI, including as County Recorder for South-East Galway - when was that? And is that where you do most of your botanising these days?

Micheline and fellow botanists in Co. Clare

MSS: When I joined the Botany Department in then-UCG in October 1980 the Head of Department, Prof. Michael E. Mitchell asked me would I take over recording in the three vice-counties he was responsible for; SE and NE Galway as well as Roscommon! In those days recorders were scarce indeed. I took on the two east Galway vice-counties, but soon became aware of the amount of work involved and later gave up NE Galway, with some regret, as it had helped me explore parts of the county I didn’t know. As I live in SE Galway, it is easy for me to botanise in familiar territory -which comprises some of the low Burren, a great number of turloughs and part of the Slieve Aughty Mountains. Further east there is the River Shannon with its flood-meadows and a corner of Lough Derg. I love exploring this very varied range of habitats. With Cilian Roden, we’ve recently been exploring the Slieve Aughty Mountains for filmy-ferns, though these seem frustratingly rarer in SE Galway than in the more westerly part, in Co. Clare!

LM: And then in November 2022, you became BSBI President! We’ll cover that in the third and final part of this interview, coming soon, but for now, thanks for talking to us Micheline.