On this week's programme, we’re looking at the Irish emigrant experience in the United States – through the words of the people who lived it. For generations, letters carried across the Atlantic were a lifeline, linking families divided by oceans and by time.

They spoke of wages and work, but also of homesickness, ambition, grief and joy. Thousands of these voices are now gathered in one place at the University of Galway, in the Imirce Digital Collection.

Tonight, we’ll hear from the people behind the project, and explore what these letters reveal about the hopes and struggles of ordinary Irish emigrants – whose stories still resonate today. And you can search the collection yourself on the Imirce website.

You can also donate your own letters or other material, click here for more information on that.

We begin in Galway, where our reporter Marc McMenamin has been finding out more about this extraordinary collection.

Then Myles is joined in studio by four guests. Professor Breandán Mac Suibhne, Historian of Society and Culture in Modern Ireland; Professor Daniel Carey from the School of English, Media and Creative Arts at the University of Galway; Marie-Louise Rouget, a digital archivist with the Imirce Project; and Helen Hayes Sweeney, who recently completed her Masters in History at the University of Galway, where her dissertation focused on the emigrant letters of Mick McGee from Donegal.