Commencing Thursday 30th January 2025 for 6 weeks.
With weekly contribution from Lurgan historian and author, Dr Gerard MacAtasney. 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). Gerard 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).
30th January @ 7pm (GMT)
“Children in Irish workhouses during and after the Great Famine”.
Dr Simon Gallaher
Dr Simon Gallaher is a historian of childhood and deprivation. His doctoral thesis, completed in 2020 at the University of Cambridge, is entitled ‘Children and Childhood under the Irish Poor Law, c. 1850-1914’. He has written on various aspects of the Irish workhouse system, including the composition of families, the long-term effect of the Great Famine on children’s experiences in the institution, and on the cultural imaginings of the workhouse child.
6th February @ 7pm (GMT)
“Of Monsters and ogres: Evicting the poor during Ireland’s Great Famine”.
Dr Ciarán Reilly – Maynooth University.
Dr Ciarán Reilly is a 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 several 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).
13th February @ 7pm (GMT)
“Popular piety in Ireland the pre-Famine and post-Famine periods”.
Prof. Salvador Ryan – St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth.
Salvador Ryan Professor of Ecclesiastical History, St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth where he writes on religious and cultural history from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Other published titles include Death and the Irish, Marriage and the Irish, and Birth and the Irish (2016-21); Northern European Reformations: Transnational Perspectives (2020); Material Cultures of Devotion in the Age of Reformations (2022) and Reforming the Church: Global Perspectives (2023).
“Rippling Effects of The Great Irish Famine: Separated from family by crime and transportation”.
Dr Perry McIntyre AM – Visiting Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, Australia.
Dr Perry McIntyre has been involved in genealogical research for over 40 years which is where her interest in emigration from Ireland began. She has served on the council of the Society of Australian Genealogists (20 years) as well as the Royal Australian Historical Society, the Catholic Historical Society, the History Council of NSW including being chair for 2 years and other local societies such her local Mosman Historical Society. Perry’s PhD was on reunion of convict with their families, published by Irish Academic Press as Free Passage: The Reunion of Irish Convicts and their Families in Australia 1788-1852 (2011). In 2021 Perry was awarded an order of Australia (AM) for services to history and genealogy. Her current research is the workhouse orphan emigration scheme during the Famine years 1848-1850. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales.
20th February @ 7pm (GMT)
“The Great Famine on the Powerscourt Estate (Benburb district) and along the Blackwater, 1845-52”.
Dr Dónal McAnallen – National Museums Northern Ireland
Dr Dónal is Library and Archives Manager for National Museums NI, based at Cultra, where he has recently devised Irish-language and Ulster-Scots-themed trails of Ulster Folk Museum. He is current Editor of Dúiche Néill: the Journal of the Ó Neill Country Historical Society. This talk is based on research initiated by his late father on the subject of The Great Famine in the Benburb district, Co. Tyrone.
27th February @ 7pm (GMT)
“Mothering and infant feeding in the workhouse during the Great Irish Famine”.
Judy Bolger – Trinity College Dublin
Judy Bolger is a PhD candidate at Trinity College, Dublin. Her PhD examined the social discourse surrounding impoverished mothers and women’s experiences of maternity and motherhood in Irish workhouses during the late nineteenth-century. The research was funded by the Trinity College, Dublin 1252 Postgraduate Research Scholarship. She has published works on mothers and the workhouse in Salvador Ryan (ed.), Birth and the Irish: a Miscellany (2021) and in Historical Studies, vol. 19 (2019). Judy works in the Academic Resource Office of Carlow College, St Patrick and is the Book Review Editor for the Women’s History Association of Ireland. She has a keen interest in the history of poverty, motherhood, and infant care. Her M.Phil. thesis research examined the social history of Irish breastfeeding during the nineteenth century.
6th March @ 7pm (GMT)
“May Almighty prosper you . . . these gifts will make me all right”: Emigrant remittances and the family in post-Famine Leitrim.
Dr Fiona Slevin
Dr Fiona Slevin grew up in Mohill, County Leitrim. Her PhD, completed in 2024, investigated local market dynamics in post-Famine Leitrim (1850-1875), including the money flows to ordinary families. In 2023, she was awarded the ESHSI New Researchers Prize. Fiona has published a number of histories of south Leitrim in the nineteenth century and is deeply involved in the promotion and celebration of local heritage and history. She also runs the Young Historian programme in Leitrim schools. Before embarking on her PhD, Fiona had a career in business as a tech entrepreneur and change management consultant and is a chartered company director. Her website www.loughrynn.net provides access to a rich resource of history relating to Mohill and south Leitrim from the Famine period (1840s) up to the late 1870s
Lecture Recordings: Each lecture will be recorded and uploaded to Councils YouTube channel to accommodate those unable to attend live.
