Inside the Irish Giant: History, Science and Art was a project conceived by the Warwick Centre for the History of Medicine, as a two day public engagement event (27th-28th May 2011) combining Cartoon de Salvo’s theatrical production, ‘The Irish Giant’, with expert panel discussions exploring two separate themes from the piece.

Developed in close collaboration with a medical ethicist and a medical historian, this work-in-progress performance plunges its bloody hands into Byrne's history to discover: who owns our bodies - and who should? Are we all just flesh and bone? And how do you live when death is daily shadowing your every step...? Intellectually the production asks important and timeless questions about what it means to be human in the past and present, and of the relationship between science, faith and commerce. Can our belief in the ‘usefulness’ of science justify the disregard of other beliefs and value systems? How ‘valuable’ is human life? A night of theatre making and scientific enquiry started with a chance to see this brand new show as it's being made followed by panel discussions about the impact and themes of the piece; Religion, Science and Commerce & Gigantism, Genetics and History.