President Michael D. Higgins also spoke about the contribution of the research in his address at UCC in 2018
‘It is perhaps because its origins are steeped in such a history that University College Cork has been to the fore in bringing both a scholarly rigour and a moral engagement to the study of a defining period in what was, to use a phrase used by the late Brendan Bradshaw, the ‘catastrophic dimensions of the Irish past’. The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, a project led by scholars of this university, represents an important achievement as a piece of inter-disciplinary scholarship and it is without doubt a profound contribution to our understanding of An Gorta Mór. We can all gain so much from drawing on the new research for a deeper understanding of the Great Famine, which was the single most important event in forming, and giving form, to a distinctive form of Irish modernity, one defined by catastrophe and its aftermath, by the determination to survive, whether at home or abroad, and by the drawing forth of some of the very best and worst instincts of humanity – greed and generosity, hope and despair, freedom and servitude. https://www.president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/address-at-the-national-famine-commemoration-2018
‘The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine is a stunning achievement, full of cutting-edge research and inter-disciplinary perspectives, lavishly illustrated and a worthy monument to the defining event in modern Irish history.’
Professor Diarmaid Ferriter, Department of Modern History, University College Dublin, The Irish Times 8 December 2012, p. 11