A University of Our Time

This year, the University of Limerick celebrates its fiftieth anniversary and has been marked by a series of events branded UL50. Over the last 50 years, the university has accumulated a significant amount of material that demonstrates its development from the National Institute for Higher Education in 1972 to the University of Limerick in 1989, and beyond. This material is preserved as the University of Limerick Archives. This collection contains a variety of documents such as correspondence, plans, meeting minutes, brochures, and prospectuses. There is also a variety of ephemera, such as invitations to university events, menus from official dinners, and stickers.

The University of Limerick archives have recently been utilised in the recent UL50 exhibition, A University of Our Time, which tells the story of the University of Limerick, and the institutions that went before it, curated by Zara Power and working closely with the Special Collections & Archives Department. The exhibition was launched on the 28 September 2022 in the Millstream Building. It is open to the public and will run until 31 May 2023. The launch was attended by the founding President, Dr Ed Walsh, who donated additional archives relating to UL, including 28 years’ worth of his diaries, to the Special Collections and Archives Department.