 |
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.
.jpg)
