Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies continues its 2025-2026 series with a screening of Aoife Kelleher’s feature documentary Mrs. Robinson, about former Irish president and current chair of The Elders, Mary Robinson. The screening, on Thursday, instead of the usual Friday timeslot for the series, October 30, at 4:30 p.m. is at the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street. An audience Q&A with Kelleher will follow the screening. The event is free and open to the public; tickets are required and are available to reserve in advance through University Ticketing. The theater is an accessible venue, and guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
In Mrs. Robinson, Aoife Kelleher brings to the screen a 90-minute portrait of popular change-maker Mary Robinson. As Ireland’s first female president, a pioneering U.N. high commissioner for human rights, and the successor of Nelson Mandela as chair of The Elders, Robinson—now 81—is widely considered a figurehead of modern Ireland. The traditionally structured documentary uses archival clips, journalist segments, and interviews with Robinson herself to tell an inspiring story about female leadership, human rights activism, and climate action. In a review for Film Ireland, Carmen Bryce shares that “as charismatic and inspirational as its subject, Mrs. Robinson will make you proud to be Irish.”
At the 2025 Irish Film & Television Awards, Mrs. Robinson was nominated for the George Morrison Feature Documentary Award.
Aoife Kelleher. Photo credit: Rachel Lysaght
Kelleher is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and lecturer from Dublin, Ireland. Her debut film, One Million Dubliners, about Ireland’s celebrated necropolis, Glasnevin Cemetery, received numerous awards and screened internationally. She has worked in current affairs programming for RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster, and made documentaries for RTÉ, Sky, ARTE, and the British Film Institute. Kelleher’s most recent film, Testimony, about the Justice for Magdalenes campaign on behalf of the survivors of Ireland’s institutions, premiered at the 2025 Dublin International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Human Rights Film. She lectures in film and broadcasting and journalism in the School of Media at Technological University Dublin.
The 2025-26 Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired by Professor of the Practice in Theater Jane Cox, director of the Program in Theater & Music Theater at the Lewis Center, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.
The Fund for Irish Studies affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.” The lecture series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts.
The Fund for Irish Studies website lists more information about the lecture series. Additional events scheduled for the year include:
- November 14 — A conversation with acclaimed actor and writer/director Olwen Fouéré, visiting through a continued partnership with the Abbey Theatre
- February 8, 2026 (Sunday) — Musician Matt Molloy, member of traditional Irish folk band The Chieftains
- March 20 — Author, critic and scholar Fintan O’Toole delivers the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture
- April 10 — Biographer and editor Merlin Holland on “Oscar Wilde between the li(n)es”
The Fund for Irish Studies is generously sponsored by the Durkin Family Trust and the James J. Kerrigan Jr. ’45 and Margaret M. Kerrigan Fund for Irish Studies.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.
