Two specialist societies for legal studies in Ireland have recently been established - it’s quite hard to get something like this off the ground in a small jurisdiction with a handful of law schools, so if you’re involved in research in any of these fields, please do get involved.

The Irish Jurisprudence Society is about to start its second year of activities. The IJS, founded last summer, has already organised a programme of workshops in Dublin, and in the forthcoming academic year, will hold a symposium, continue the workshops, and much more. Students will be particularly interested to know that a treasure trove of 500 one-euro coins awaits the winner of the inaugural undergraduate essay prize; closing date 30.11.2008. (Disclosure: I have helped the organisers to get the website and discussion group off the ground - but they are doing all the work).

Secondly, the first conference and AGM of the Irish Society of Comparative Law has been announced for 27th/28th February 2009, at the University of Limerick. Abstracts are welcome (by 24.10.2008 - further information from Seán Donlan.

Of course, existing societies like the Irish Society of International Law continue to be active; if you’re involved in a new, existing or proposed society, please feel free to plug it here. There will of course be an Irish contingent at the Society of Legal Scholars annual conference in London next month (in fact, last year there was even a Facebook for the “Irish contingent”, though not many actually made it to the conference!)

This week, I’ve started a separate blog, Rhymes With Porridge, for posts that aren’t connected to cyberlaw, media law or legal education. Please follow me there if you’re interested in posts about books, music, travel, and the various other bits of babble that have occasionally (or frequently) popped up on this blog. It has its own RSS feed though I hope to set up a single feed for both blogs (for the true fans/stalkers).

A more detailed explanation of why I’m doing this, and what the new blog will contain, is available here. As part of the split, I’ll change some other things around here, so please bear with me as I wreck the place in an attempt to do so.

I have (again) been neglecting Lex Ferenda, but the excuse is marginally better this time. See, I have been in the process of moving, rearranging, settling in and so on (and that’s without getting into the saga of the broadband provider that seems to do everything other than provide broadband). But here I am, mostly intact.

This summer, I have moved to Norwich, which is a small(ish) city in the east of England (tourist site, Wiki page, map), to take up a full-time lecturing position (here’s my page) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). I’m very excited about this new role in the Law School, and - given that I will continue to have an interest in media and Internet law through teaching and research - hope to continue this blog in some form. Over the next few weeks, I may be doing a good deal of rearranging, perhaps splitting the site into two, one more focused ‘work’ blog and one for the rest of the ramblings. For now, things may be pretty quiet, although I can’t miss recording the publication of my article, “The Mass Age of Internet Law” in the latest issue of Information and Communications Technology Law (ICTL); unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but once I get things sorted on the site, I’ll make some version of it available through self-archiving.