News

Composer, musician, singer and producer Phil Coulter was honoured by The Open University with the award of Doctor of the University at a ceremony in Croke Park today on Friday 20 April. Mr Coulter had his award conferred alongside 103 students from all walks of life, of all ages and backgrounds and from a spectrum of careers.

As 2017 comes to an end, take a look back over what has been a fantastic year for The Open University.

On 22 November, The Open University in Ireland hosted a discussion event on the recent BBC/OU co-production Languages of Ulster. The three-part documentary series, explored Ulster’s unique linguistic traditions – Irish Gaelic, northern Hiberno English and Ulster-Scots – and the relationship between them.

Nessa O’Mahony, Associate Lecturer at The Open University (OU) is co-editor of a new international poetry anthology Metamorphic: 21st Century Poets respond to Ovid. 

A fascinating, new three-part documentary series, co-produced by The Open University and BBC Two Northern Ireland, Languages of Ulster aired Sunday 12^th November at 10pm.  It explored Ulster’s unique linguistic traditions – Irish Gaelic, northern Hiberno English and Ulster-Scots – and the relationship between them.

The OU Faculty of STEM is celebrating the inauguration of its remotely-controlled robotic telescopes, which will bring astronomy and space science to life for students whenever and wherever they are in the world.

Renowned Gaelic football manager Mickey Harte was honoured by The Open University with the award of Doctor of the University at a ceremony in Croke Park on Friday 28th April. Mr Harte had his award conferred alongside 135 graduating students – from all walks of life, of all ages and backgrounds and from a spectrum of careers.

OU PhD student, Jack Wright has been given the honour of naming a 120km diameter crater on Mercury which he identified through his mapping of the planet.

The Rosetta Mission will end with a controlled descent to the surface of Comet 67P on Friday 30 September 2016*; however, its legacy will live on in applications on Earth, developed by academics at The Open University, including detecting cancer and sniffing bed bugs.

An international team of astronomers has detected a planet orbiting our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The research, which has been published in Nature to a global audience, suggests that the planet is at just the right distance from Proxima Centauri for liquid water to exist on its surface and has the potential to support life.