Professor Bronwen Walter has just returned from a two-week research visit funded by the British Academy, consulting archives and library collections in St John's. She also held workshops at Memorial University with academics interested in these issues, including historians, geographers, anthropologists and folklorists, and with policy-makers and community members. Owing to economic partnerships with Ireland and the high-profile of folk music and story-telling in the island's cultural life, the issue of Irish descent is prominent in the public sphere. This contrasts with other parts of the diaspora within the British Commonwealth which Bronwen has been studying. She was interviewed on radio by CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in October about her comparative project exploring the issue of Irish descentness in Newfoundland, New Zealand and England.

Ethnic backgrounds in Newfoundland are very unusual. Half the population have ancestry in and around Waterford, south east Ireland, and the remaining half in Dorset and Devon. Large-scale in-migration, linked to the cod fisheries, ceased around 1830 so these links are seven and eight generations away. Yet they remain very significant in people's lives today, especially in the more rural outports where many people speak with Irish or Dorset dialects and are clearly recognisable in appearance, owing to community stability and low levels of intermarriage.

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