The Seamus Heaney Memorial Lecture series was inaugurated in 2014, marking the first anniversary of the poet's death on August 30, 2013.

Heaney had a special relationship with the Keough-Naughton Institute and the University of Notre Dame. He visited the university in 1994 and 2003, giving poetry readings to overflowing auditoriums. In 2008, University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. awarded Heaney an honorary degree at the Keough-Naughton Centre in Dublin. He was lifelong friend of Seamus Deane, the initial Donald and Marilyn Keough Chair of Irish Studies; the pair met as schoolmates at St. Columb’s College, a Catholic boys' grammar school in Derry, Northern Ireland.

While difficult to measure his influence, in response to Heaney’s passing, then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, “For us, Seamus Heaney was the keeper of language, our codes, our essence as a people. He belongs with Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, and Beckett in the pantheon of our greatest literary exponents.” This annual event honors his memory and his outstanding contributions to Irish and world literature.