Do you have Irish ancestry? Would you like to know more about the effects of the Great Irish Famine on your ancestors? Commencing Thursday 30th January 2025 for 5 weeks, this free online lecture series may be for you. Delivered by the Armagh City Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council, each lecture will be recorded and uploaded to Councils YouTube channel to accommodate those unable to attend live.
Each lecture is described on the website as follows :
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.
I'm looking forward to listening in on this lecture series and learning more about the Famine and its impact on my Irish ancestors.
