A new partnership between NUI Maynooth and Quinnipiac University in the United States, where Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum is located, was celebrated at an event in Dublin last night.

The partnership will see students at the Connecticut-based university take a new course in Irish Studies and spend part of the year on the NUI Maynooth campus. The course is expected to be up and running this time next year.

Irish Famine expert Christine Kinealy will teach part of the new course which Quinnipiac University president Dr John Lahey said would be aided greatly by the museum, which is believed to hold the world’s largest collection of Famine art – some 115 paintings and sculptures spanning the last 167 years.

“Maynooth has some historical records related to the Famine and they have a real interest in incorporating our resources in the Great Hunger with some of the resources they have,” said Dr Lahey.

The museum’s curator Niamh O’Sullivan said “nobody else has tried to tell the story of the Famine visually before” and the museum attempts this through a range of mediums.