From the time of his appointment to the chair of Geography in University College Cork in 1977, Professor Smyth served the university as teacher, researcher, administrator, and represented it with distinction on national bodies, such as the Royal Irish Academy and Heritage Council of Ireland. Apart from maintaining a steady output of scholarly work in peer reviewed journals and books, Professor Smyth never forgot that the university’s remit in education extended beyond the confines of the institution. He wholeheartedly supported the reorganisation of adult education within University College Cork in the early 1990s, and delivered lectures and organised field courses to rural and urban communities throughout Munster as part of the programme in Local Studies. Professor Smyth has an abiding interest in the Irish language and has consistently used the evidence of Irish poetry and other documentary sources in his published work.

At the Anvil brings together the work of three demographic cohorts of geographers – some, like Professor John Andrews, who were important influences on Smyth’s early thinking, others who were contemporaries and colleagues, and finally a younger group of researchers, a number of whom were his former students. Many of the essays build on topics which have been worked on by Willie Smyth, others extend to issues of broader concern to contemporary geographical studies in Ireland.

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