Contributors Bio’s
Armstrong Ella
Is a Research Ireland-funded PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin. Ella holds a BA in History and Politics and an MA in the History of Welfare and Medicine in Society from University College Dublin. Her doctoral research, as part of the TÚS project, concerns the changing role of medical professionals in maternity care in Dublin during the second half of the twentieth century.
Alcorn Ann
Is a second year PhD Student at University College Cork. Her paper is titled ‘Advancing the Warp: Evelyn Gleeson weaving cultural identity and economic recovery during Ireland's Revival era’. She is also a volunteer review editor for the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.
Barrett Emma
Is a PhD Researcher with the School of English, Irish and Communications, university of Limerick. The title of her paper is The Witch of Edmonton: A case study on women, witchcraft and the socio-economic conditions of early seventeenth century England’.
Biggs Remy
Is a PhD Researcher with the School of History Trinity College Dublin. her paper is titled “The Girls from Urbiano” – Feminism and the Italian Resistance, 1943-1945.
Black Lynsey
Is an associate Professor in the school of law and Criminology at Maynooth University. Her research is focused on women and punishment, crime and security at the Northern Ireland border, the death penalty, and historical/postcolonial crime and punishment. She is the Principle Investigator on the Research Ireland-funded Starting Laureate project 'CONSPACE: Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border' (IRCLA/2022/2418_BLACK). This is a four-year project (2022-2026) which uses archival and participant research methodologies to tease out the meanings of crime and security at the Northern Irish border over a 100-year period exploring historical and contemporary perspectives.
Bolger Judy
Dr Judy Bolger is a social historian and lecturer at Carlow College, St Patrick, who specialises in the history of poverty, motherhood, and infant care. She completed her PhD at Trinity College, Dublin (2025), where her doctoral research explored women’s use of the Irish workhouse during the late nineteenth-century for childbirth and motherhood. This research was funded by the Trinity College, Dublin 1252 Postgraduate Scholarship. Judy has published works on motherhood and the Irish Poor Law, nationally and internationally. She is the outgoing Book Review Editor and the incoming Treasurer for the Women’s History Association of Ireland (2026).
Bradley Davies Héléne
Is the Current Acting Assistant Dean of Arts. Her teaching focuses on Society and settlement in medieval and 17th century Ireland; social and spatial change in 19th century Irish cities, with particular reference to Limerick city; geographies of death and burial in 18th and 19th century Ireland; historical archives & cartography; nations and nationalism in contemporary Europe and the changing nature of the State.
Brosnan Anne Maire
Is a lecturer in History and Policy of Education at Mary I Limerick. Her most recent publication A Contested Terrain: Freedpeople's Education in North Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Fordham University Press) was published in 2025. Her paper is titled ‘Mary Kildare: An Irish Missionary Teaching Former Slaves in the American South, 1867-1874’.
Camping – Harris Marnie
Started her MPhil at Trinity College in 2025. The title of her paper is ‘Transnational Heiress: Isabel de Clare and the Intersection of Female Lineage and Colonial Power’.
Crutchfield Lisa
Is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Lynchburg, USA. The title of her paper is ‘Greater Gains for Women Under Frontier Conditions? A Case Study of Irish Immigrants to Colonial Georgia’.
Decker Kristina
Completed her PhD AT ucc in 2025. She received IRC funding in 2018 for her PhD research project, ‘Women and Improvement in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: the Case of Mary Delany’, which examines the ways in which Mary Delany participated in the cult of improvement across such areas as education, sociability, landscape, and female ‘accomplishments’. Previously, she was awarded the 2017 Desmond Guinness Scholarship for research on the visual arts in Ireland from the Irish Georgian Society. Additionally, Kristina has a MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies from King’s College London where her research focused on lapdogs in the long eighteenth-century. Her research interests include women’s history and the cultural history of the long eighteenth century, country house and material culture studies, and animal histories.
De Mello Julien Santos
Is a PhD student with the School of History and Geography and the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems. His paper is titled ‘‘Healing Roots: Women and Traditional Medicine in Irish Folklore’
Doyle Helen
Helen Doyle, PhD student with the History Department of Maynooth University. The title of her paper is What did Irish families have to gain from committing female relatives to district asylums as ‘dangerous’ lunatics.
Evans Hannah
Is a PhD student at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. The title of her paper is ‘Patronage, piety and politics: women’s gift-giving in medieval Ireland’
Farrell Elaine P.
Elaine currently teaches part-time at the School of Celtic Studies Maynooth University. The title of her paper is ‘Mothers of Saints: Representations of mothers in Irish saints lives’
Farrell Tadgh
Is current studying for his PhD at Trinity College Dublin. The title of his paper is ‘The Economic Lives of Noblewomen in late Medieval Thomond’.
Foley Deirdre
Is a historian of modern Ireland and has published widely on the social and legal status of women. She is a former Roy Foster Irish Government Research Fellow at the Hertford College, Oxford, and has previously held two Research Ireland postdoctoral awards (Government of Ireland and Enterprise) at University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin. Currently, she is Principal Investigator of a new Research Ireland Pathway award, ‘TÚS: Pregnancy and Giving Birth in Ireland, 1950-2020’ at the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin.
Gallagher Ébha
Éabha is currently completing an MPhil in Modern Irish History at Trinity College Dublin. the title of her paper is From Exclusion to Empowerment: Support Networks and Advocacy among Single Mothers, c.1960s-1990s.
Henderson Ciara
Dr Ciara Henderson is an interdisciplinary research fellow at the School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin. Ciara’s work explores perinatal death, burial, and bereavement in historical and contemporary context, locating such deaths in broader cultural responses to death, dying, burial and bereavement, tracing the evolution of Irish death traditions for adults and babies from the 19th century to the present day. Ciara currently works on institutional and post-institutional models of mental health and social care. She is Science Communications Officer for COST Action 22159 (EuroHealthHist: National, International and Transnational Histories of Healthcare, 1850-2000). She is an Executive Council officer for the international Association for Death & Society (ASDS), and sits on the editorial board of Mortality journal. Her most recent publication is Catharín na Leanbh (Village of Children): the use of cillíní for the burial of the unbaptised in rural Ireland in the 19th century in Death, Commemoration and Cultural Meaning, Historic and Present, eds. Lacy, R & Spinelli, R, Berghan Books USA (2025)
Hanrahan Karen
Is an Associate Professor University College London where she lecturers in Education. The title of her paper is ‘“Life is for the liver”: Transitions in convent life following the Second Vatican Council’.
Jobling Suzanne
Suzanne graduated in 2024 with a history PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. She returned
to third level education after a career in IT consultancy and business analysis. Her research
interests are inspired by her career and include women’s employment experiences, alongside
equal pay and sex discrimination cases taken by women workers in the Republic of Ireland
and UK, between 1970 and the early 1990s. Her first article was published by Irish Economic
and Social History, and her second article will be published in the coming months in Women’s History Review. For the last two years she has convened a module focused on Irish
women’s history in QUB.
Kane Adam
Adam Kane is a PhD candidate in the UCD School of History. His research considers the extent to which Irish women participated in the financial sphere between 1800-1900, with a particular emphasis upon the motive and circumstantial factors that incentivised engagement with emerging financial instruments and ventures.
Lively Anna
I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and a historian of twentieth-century Ireland and Russia. My research specialisms include transnational approaches, histories of the press and the history of ideas. Before starting at Strathclyde in September 2024 I was a Teaching Fellow in Modern History at the University of Aberdeen and Roy Foster Irish Government Research Fellow in the History and Culture of Ireland at the University of Oxford. I completed my AHRC-funded PhD, titled 'Revolutionary Reverberations: Russia and Ireland in War and Revolution, 1905-1923', at the University of Edinburgh in 2022. My current research explores the role of Irish women in global anti-communist networks, 1919-1939.
Matthews Mary
Long-time genealogist, Mary Matthews is an MA student in History of the Family at
University of Limerick having previously been a teacher and studied both psychology
and politics at masters level.
McBride Róisín Doherty
Is a second year PhD student at Mary Immaculate College. Her PhD research is based on the archive of Limerick based charity the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, who assisted dozens of people after leaving Limerick prison with returning to their lives or setting themselves up for new ones using funds, training and connections in the late 1890s.
McCabe Ciaran
Is a social historian of Ireland and Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century. His first monograph, Begging, Charity and Religion in Pre-Famine Ireland was published in Liverpool University Press’s ‘Reappraisals in Irish History’ series in 2018 and received a Special Commendation Award in the NUI Publication Prize in Irish History 2019.
Mc Williams Cathryn
Cathryn Bronwyn McWilliams is Associate Professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Her doctoral research concerned the letters and legacy of the Belfast social campaigner and United Irishwoman Mary Ann McCracken (1770–1866), and she is currently working on the first published edition of McCracken’s collected correspondence. Cathryn is co-leader of a research group focused on life writing and is co-editing a forthcoming special Nordic edition of Taylor and Francis’ Life Writing journal. Her wider research interests include epistolary studies, textual materiality, archival studies, and creativity in the classroom.
Noto Giorgio
Giorgia began her PhD in January 2025 at the School of History and Geography after being awarded a four-year Postgraduate Research Scholarship funded by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Turin and an M.Phil in Early Modern History from Trinity College Dublin. Her doctoral project investigates the intersections between politics, gender, and religion during the sixteenth century. Case studies include women from the courts of Savoy, Gonzaga, and Este, three of the greatest families in the Italian peninsula, who crossed their paths at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Giorgia’s research has the potential to deepen our understanding of the key roles played by women in a context of war and religious turmoil, as well as to re-evaluate the neat division between secular and religious spheres. It will also reassess the popular image of a clear distinction between Renaissance, characterised by art, cultural exchange and female patronage, and Counter-Reformation, depicted as dark, oppressive and limiting for female agency, too.
O’Donnell Teresa
Teresa is a PhD Student at Mary I. The title of her paper is ‘Gráinne Yeats: Renaissance Woman’.
O’Regan Rebecca
Is a PhD Student at the School of History and Geography University of Limerick. In May she presented her paper 'Elite women and philanthropy during Ireland’s Great Famine, 1845–52' as part of the 2026 National Famine Commemoration.
O’Riordan Maeve
Maeve O'Riordan is lecturer in women's and cultural history at the School of History. She is interested particularly in nineteenth and twentieth century social history, women's history, country house studies and material culture. Her publications include Women of the Irish Country house, 1860 – 1914.
Panetta Amy Lynn
Amy Lynn Panetta is an MA student in History of the Family at the University of Limerick, with prior postgraduate training in ethnomusicology. Her research interests include the preservation of memory and migration, kinship care, and women’s spirituality in Irish and Italian contexts.
Rice Naomi
Is a second year PhD student at the School of History and Geography, University of Limerick. In April of 2026 she had an article on ‘ how the Northern Ireland’s Mural stories about the past’ on RTE Brainstorm. The article forms part of todays paper.
Segovia Magali
Is a PhD Researcher in the department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at University College Cork and the recipient of the Cara Levey Memorial Scholarship. She is a Licencee in History by Universidad Nacional del Sur (Argentina) and holds a Diploma in Gender and Sexual Diversity Policy with Human Rights Perspective by Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina). Her PhD thesis explores the understandings of Irishness as a complex intersectional gendered identity through the cultural production of the Irish community in The Southern Cross, Fianna and The Hiberno-Argentine Review in Argentina during the first half of the 20th century. Magalí’s research interests lie across the construction of identities and its representation as influenced by colonialism, imperialism and gender. Her approach is done through the fields of Cultural Studies, Gender Studies and Latin American Feminisms, Anti/Decolonial thinking and History.
Shiels Melissa
Melissa was awarded her doctorate from University College Cork in 2025. She has won numerous awards during her time as a PhD scholar including in 2023 IRC funding for her PhD research project: ‘Gift-exchange and the Tudor Subjugation of Ireland: Evidence and Explorations’. From 2013-23 Melissa was a Heritage Expert under the Heritage in Schools scheme and frequently gives public talks in museums, libraries, schools, and literary festivals. She continues to provide talks, demonstrations and exhibitions to academic and non-academic audiences on historical clothing from a 1,000-year period (10th century to 1860s).
Sutton Joanna
Is a first year PhD Student in the Department of History, Maynooth University. The title of her paper is, ‘“Wilfully Disobedient’: The two marriages of Elizabeth Preston, 1585-1614’.
Tate Katie
Completed her PhD in history at Queens University Belfast in 2023. She is currently a Research Fellow at Stranmillis College Belfast. The title of her paper is ‘social gain and female authority: Governors’ wives in Northern Ireland, 1922 – 1972.
Warburton Aimee
Is a PhD Student at Liverpool Hope University. She began her PhD in 2023 after receiving a Vice-Chancellorship Scholarship award. Her research focused on the roles and experiences of republican women from the Munster region of Ireland during the revolutionary years, 1919 – 1923.
Whelan Bernadette
Is Professor Emeritus at the School of History and Geography, University of Limerick and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Her research interest include Irish foreign policy, American-Irish foreign policy and women’s history. Her most recent publication, published in 2024, is Irish First Ladies and First Gentleman, 1911 – 2011.