Commencing Thursday 15th February 2024 for 6 weeks.
Series will be chaired by Dr Gerard MacAtasney, Lurgan historian and author. His books include, The Dead Buried By The Dying: The Great Famine In Leitrim (2014), The Other Famine: The 1822 Crisis in County Leitrim (2010), Leitrim and the Croppies (1998). Dr MacAtasney also contributed to The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (2012) and was co-author of The Hidden Famine: Poverty, Hunger and Sectarianism in Belfast (2000).
15th February @ 7pm (GMT)
“Black sheep disgrace any flock”: The Irish Land Agent and the Great Famine.
Dr Ciarán Reilly, Maynooth University
Dr Ciarán Reilly is an historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Irish social history at the Department of History, Maynooth University with a special interest in The Great Irish Famine. He is also Assistant Director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses & Estates at the Department of History. Ciarán is the author of a number of books including The Irish Land Agent (2014); Strokestown and the Great Irish Famine (2014) and John Plunket Joly and the Great Famine in King’s County (2012) and was co-editor of Dublin and the Great Irish Famine (2022).
“Separated from their country and their kindred”: Convict Transportation from Ireland during the Famine period.
Dr Anna McKay, Liverpool University
Dr Anna McKay is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool. Her work examines the lives and experiences of prisoners across the British imperial world, from convicts to war captives, with a particular interest in the use of prison ships. Anna has held visiting and postdoctoral fellowships at the British Library, University College Cork, National Maritime Museum, and the Institute for Historical Research, and in 2022 was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize for her article on convict corpses.
22nd February @ 7pm (GMT)
Barbarous’ Murders: Gender, Violence and Mortality (1846-52).
Dr Michelle McGoff-McCann
Dr Michelle McGoff-McCann has been researching, writing and speaking on the history of County Monaghan in the nineteenth century and coroner, William Charles Waddell (1798-1878) and his casebooks. Her first book was published in 2003, Melancholy Madness: A Coroner’s Casebook. After completing a PhD in History at Queen’s University Belfast in 2019, she has written a definitive text, The Irish Coroner: Death, Murder and Politics in Co. Monaghan, 1846-78 (2023). It covers the work of the coroner in pre-Famine, Famine and post-Famine Ireland using Waddell’s unique records to create a new social and political history during the Famine and exposes a gap in Irish administrative history.
In this lecture Michelle will offer some original research as to the violence and murders during the Famine years – and evidence of an increase in police presence, comparing several south ulster counties while getting into some specific murder cases and the outcomes.
29th February @ 7pm (GMT)
Outdoor Relief in the West of Ireland with a focus on County Galway.
Dr Christy Cunniffe
Dr Christy Cunniffe is currently the voluntary curator at the Irish Workhouse Museum housed in the Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna Co. Galway. His goal is to develop the museum to professional museum standards as a space to display artefacts and objects related to the Workhouse System in Ireland and the Great Famine. Recently retired as a Community Archaeologist with Galway County Council, he is actively engaged in various aspects of archaeology.
7th March @ 7.30pm (GMT)
Suicide in Ireland during The Great Famine.
Dr Georgina Laragy, Trinity College Dublin
Dr Georgina Laragy is Dublin Cemeteries Trust Assistant Professor in Public History and Cultural Heritage. She is an historian who focuses largely on social history, in particular the history of suicide, death and poverty in nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland. Fascinated by how the state acquired knowledge about its citizens in the nineteenth century and used that information to construct massive amounts of data about mortality, disease, and welfare during the period up to partition. She is also interested in the history of institutions, including workhouses, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and Magdalen asylums. Part of her job involves working with the Dublin Cemeteries Trust at Glasnevin Cemetery and Museum developing their public history, education, and research activities. She is author of Suicide in Ireland, 1823-1918; a social and cultural history’ (under contract with Liverpool University Press).
14th March @ 7pm (GMT)
Mind Your Language: The Decline of the Irish Language in the Nineteenth Century.
Dr Alan Fernihough, Queen’s University Belfast
In the 19th century, Ireland underwent a radical linguistic shift as English rapidly replaced Irish as the predominant language. Join us as Dr Alan Fernihough of Queen’s University Belfast unravels the complex story behind the decline of the Irish language over this transformative period.
Using detailed historical census data and mapping techniques, Dr Fernihough and his colleagues have traced the retreating geographic boundary of Irish speakers westward over the 1800s. Their research reveals that while education and economic incentives played a role, the decline was equally driven by changes in generational language transmission within families and districts.
In this lecture, open to all non-academic audiences, Alan will highlight the key social and cultural forces that contributed to this massive shift in Ireland’s linguistic heritage over a relatively short period. The findings provide insight into not only Irish history but also the deeper dynamics that can erode minority languages.
Alan is a Senior Lecturer in Queen’s Management School. His economic history research spans areas such as demography, economic growth, and international trade. In 2016, he was awarded the ESRC’s Future Research Leaders for his project The Causes and Consequences of the Great Irish Famine. Recent publications include Population and Poverty in Ireland on the Eve of the Great Famine in Demography and Coal and the European Industrial Revolution in the Economic Journal.
21st March @ 7pm (GMT)
The American Wake.
Mr. David Broderick
An American wake is quite like a funeral wake except for one key difference, that the person being waked was still alive and the wake represented a last chance to ever hear from a departing emigrant. David Broderick will look at how The American Wake originated in rural Ireland during the 1800’s at a time of poverty and famine, and when emigration meant a one-way ticket never seeing your family again.
David a historian and researcher from Lorrha, County Tipperary who currently works at the Irish Workhouse Centre in Portumna County Galway. He holds a master’s degree in Public History and Cultural Heritage from the University of Limerick. His book, Finding Ogle: The Mystery of the Disappearing Workhouse Master (2019) is a study of the Portumna Workhouse in County Galway and its notorious master, Henry Ogle.
There will be an opportunity for a Q&A at the end of each lecture with a brief interval between speakers.
Lecture Recordings: Each lecture, excluding 7th March delivery, will be recorded, and uploaded to Councils YouTube channel to accommodate those unable to attend live.
Registration provides access to the entire series of lectures.
