Professor Seán McConville delivered a paper entitled 'Reflections on Alchemy' at a Berlin conference organised by the University of Limerick and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie Der Wissenschaften. The conference (which was co-sponsored by the Irish Embassy) took place on 11 and 12 August and was organised around the general theme of Friedrich Engels and Ireland. Professor McConville's paper dealt with the Fenian prisoners of 1865 - 1871 and the reaction of Marx and Engels to Fenian activities and to the imprisonment of many of the Fenian leaders and activists.