There are few places finer to participate in one’s first Joyce conference, or indeed better equipped to host a centenary reappraisal of A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, than the James Joyce Centre. Located at the very epicentre of the city forever immortalized by the author’s magnum opus, its neighbouring shopfronts offer a poignant snapshot of the ever-increasing impact made by the global upon local. Stretching either side of the Parnell monument, the amalgamation of Oriental food stores, multi-million dollar fast food chains and overseas supermarket conglomerates provide a stirring contrast to the elegant Georgian architecture that to this day still dignifies the hill of North Great George’s Street. Once inside the Centre’s Kenmare Room, the timewarping illusion is finally complete: on all sides one is surrounded by reproductions of portraits of the author and his family, while the great ceiling showcases the skilfully restored vision of master stuccodore, Michael Stapleton, which had all but disappeared by 1982. How fitting, then, that these conference proceedings should have begun on Thursday evening with a key note lecture that so effectively re-emphasised the importance of the localised Irish context within the overlapping contexts of Joyce’s modernist Bildungsroman.