NUI Galway will change its name to the University of Galway – Ollscoil na Gallimhe in Irish – at the end of the summer, the university’s President Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh has announced.
In an email to NUI Galway students this afternoon, Ó hÓgartaigh said the new name will give “a clearer sense of who we are as an institution”.
“Galway is a place of industry and creativity, of citizenship and debate”, he said. “An in-between place, at the centre of a network of campuses stretching from Shannon to Donegal, including our Gaeltacht regions, on the edge of and between continents, we here see the horizon everyday.”
“Like all good explorers, all good adventurers, all good researchers, we know we serve our students and our society best by always wondering what’s beyond the horizon.”
“The university is proud of the role it has played in Galway’s journey to become a global city”, he added. “City and university have grown together and our new name encapuslates that history and is a promise for the future.”
Last year, the Irish Times reported that NUI Galway was considering a rebrand due to strengthen its identity and emphasise its status as a university to an international audience.
Academics in the university were keen to ensure a new name would also work in Irish, given the special status afforded to the language at the university.
The 176-year-old university was founded as Queen’s College Galway before changing to University College Galway (UCG) in 1908, following the establishment of the NUI as a federal university with three constituent colleges.
In the late 1990s, UCG – along with University College Cork, University College Dublin and Maynooth – were recognised as full universities with looser ties to the NUI under the Universities Act (1997). This led to changes in their legal names to NUI Cork, Dublin, Galway and Maynooth.
In 2014, NUI Maynooth rebranded as Maynooth University, citing confusion over its official title in international contexts, and the fact that its former title did not have the word “university”.
Controversy ensued in Trinity in 2014 when a rebranding project dubbed the “identity initiative” was scorned by staff, students and alumni.
