Tomás Mac Conmara is an award-winning oral historian and author from County Clare. In 2016, he was commended by President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, as one of seven recipients who have made outstanding contributions to culture over the last 100 years for a Comhaltas Forógra na Cásca Centenary Award. He began documenting oral tradition and folklore in the townland of Ballymalone in east Clare as a teenager and is now recognised as one of the leading oral historians in the country. From 2008 to 2014, he led the foundation and development of Cuimhneamh an Chláir (Memories of Clare) and was also a founding member of the Oral History Network of Ireland. He is also a former County Heritage Officer and in January 2016 was appointed by UCC as Manager of the Cork Folklore Project. As Director of Mac Conmara Heritage Consulting, Tomás has led the development of national oral history programmes with the Irish Defence Forces and Waterways Ireland. His clients also include the Health Service Executive, Dublin Port, Kilkenny, Cork, Donegal, Kildare, Waterford and Fingal County Councils, local authority libraries and Udarás na Gaeltachta. To contact Mac Conmara Consulting - email macconmaraheritage@gmail.com ‍ Tomás published his 20-year collection work; The Time of The Tans in 2019 by Mercier Press. The book is based on his over 400 personal recordings with older people, focused on the Irish War of Independence. In September 2021, with Mercier Press, he published The Scariff Martyrs, War, Murder and Memory in East Clare. Tomás has written four other books: ‘High Prestige', The Story of Clare's All Ireland Hurling Champions of 1914 and Patrick Brennan's Autograph Book, Frongoch Internment Camp, 1916. In 2017, he published Days of Hunger, The Clare Volunteers and the Mountjoy Hunger Strike of 1917. In 2018, he was commissioned by the HSE to write The Ministry of Healing, St. Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital, Cork, An Oral and Historical Record. Tomás is a frequent contributor on cultural and historic issues on national TV and radio in both Irish and English and delivers a regular history slot on RTE Television's The Today Show. He has been a Fellow at the University of Massachusetts from 2016 - 2018, where he worked on oral history research and lectured on Irish history. In 2019, Tomás was awarded by UCC as Research Support Person of the Year for his work in leading the Cork Folklore Project.