Welcome to Estudios Irlandeses, the scholarly journal of AEDEI, the Spanish Association for Irish Studies.

We are happy to launch Issue 4, which gathers a wide range of original work by scholars based in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Our hearty thanks to all the contributors. And our invitation to people doing research in the broad discipline of Irish Studies to submit their work for the forthcoming issues.

In March 2005 the journal made an auspicious start with a special inaugural Issue 0 containing fifteen essays which set a high standard of scholarship. As the fourth issue sees the light, the site has received some 12,000 visits,   and the aim  for  which  Estudios Irlandeses was  conceived —to be an international forum for original research in the field of Irish Studies, and to make original and cutting-edge scholarship freely available to the broadest possible audience— has come to fruition.

The fact that the journal comes out once a year gives us the opportunity of offering comprehensive reviews of the previous year's output of Irish-related material in different areas. I am enormously grateful to José Francisco Fernández for his hard work scouting, and single-handedly reviewing, the annual crop of Irish Studies publications in Spain, and to David Pierce and Tony Tracy for soliciting reviews, and respectively editing, a selection of Irish-related bibliography generated round the world and the round-up of Irish film and television. My deepest gratitude also to the members of the Editorial Board for supplying valuable feedback and advice to authors, and to Mike Pritchard for his diligent proofreading.    

Rosa González

General Editor

March 2009