Category: Community News

For much of the modern period, the land question – access to land, ownership of land, and the right to hold and work it – stood at the centre of Irish political and social life. Disputes over land shaped communities, fuelled protest movements, influenced elections, and helped define ideas of justice, democracy, identity, and nationhood. From early plantation policies to the major land reforms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the struggle over land left a lasting mark on Ireland and its diaspora.

Join us at Queen’s University Belfast for a one-day symposium exploring the history and legacy of the Irish land question. Bringing together historians and researchers from across Ireland and beyond, the event will examine how land shaped politics, society, and everyday life – and why it still matters today. The day will feature a series of talks, discussions, and opportunities to engage with new research on one of the most important themes in Irish history.

Speakers:
Rowan Bianchi (Boston College), ‘The Rockites in County Limerick during the 1820s’
Sean Connolly (QUB), ‘Was there really and “Irish Land Question”?’
Terry Dunne (Indep.), ‘The Special Infantry Corps and agrarian agitation in Clare, 1923’
Aidan Gilsenan (Maynooth), ‘The wounded soldiers of the Land war: the reinstatement of evicted tenants, 1891-1914’
Peter Gray (QUB), ‘What happened at Holycross? The origins of the Irish Tenant League in Munster, 1847-50’
Breandan Mac Suibhne (Galway), ‘What happened to this house? Brian Friel and his mother’s people, c.1660-1960’
Marc Mulholland (Oxford), ‘The Rising of the Moon – an interpretation of peasant resistance’
Constantin Torve (QUB), ‘“We can no longer exist under the yoke of our landlords or employers”: Agrarian protest and wage labour in the pre-Famine period’

Sophie Cooper (QUB) – Concluding remarks

All welcome in-person or online via Teams

Registration and further details available here

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/oconnell-and-his-legacy-tickets-1638229772349?aff=ebdssbdestsearch&utm_source=chatgpt.com

Full programme available here:

Please note the following book will also be launched at this event.

We are delighted to announce that Historical Studies XXIX based on the proceedings of the 33rd Irish Conference of Historians has been published.

For full details and to purchase, please follow this link: https://www.routledge.com/Borders-and-Boundaries-Historical-Perspectives/Finn-Hoare/p/book/9781032691862?srsltid=AfmBOoodfZz8HNuZnZ9Yxj6Y4ug4Q2q73noaLA-OKbkGKhd4lCE8_2De

Abstract:

This book examines the making and remaking of borders and boundaries primarily relating to Ireland.

Borders and Boundaries features selected papers from the 33rd Irish Conference of Historians held by the University of Galway in May 2021 on the theme of ‘Borders and Boundaries’. It covers the medieval to the contemporary, allowing a long view to be taken of the north-west border of Ireland, the borders of the early modern state, the impact of the partition of Ireland and social boundaries in the late twentieth century. It aims to stimulate debate and highlight how borders can be written out of history while remaining essential to comprehending the making and remaking of our worlds.

This volume will be of value for those interested in border studies, Irish history and modern history.

Table of Contents:

1               Introduction: The Making and Re-making of Borders

            Tomás Finn and Kieran Hoare

2          Limerick c. AD 1200: A frontier city in Europe’s Wild West                  

            Catherine Swift

3          Historical Boundaries and Historic Borders: The Case of Cairpre Dromma Clíabh                              

            Seán Ó Hoireabhárd

4          Urban Oligarchies and Border Society in later medieval Ireland                            

                Kieran Hoare

5              ‘Tudor England’s French Frontier: The Laws of Guînes (1529) and the Defence of the Calais Pale’

                  Neil Murphy

6          Conquest or recovery: enlarging the English Pale in early Tudor Ireland            

            Steven Ellis

7          The Final Tudor Frontier: the north-west of Ireland in the late sixteenth century    

             Christopher Maginn

8          Early Modern Border Management and New Historiographical Approaches

               Raingard Esser

9          Building Narratives: Ireland and the Borders of Architectural History    

                Leslie Herman

10           Protestant Demographic Dynamics in early Twentieth Century Ireland, 1901–26

                Barry Keane

11           The Day-to-Day Effects of Partition                                                                               

                Cormac Moore

12           Within an Imaginary Border: The ‘Protestant Free State’ in Independent Ireland

              Ian d’Alton

13        Fault Lines of Trade Union Disunity, 1922–1939

            Gerard Hanley

14        ‘A peripatetic university for catholic social activists’: John Hayes and the international origins of Muintir na Tire’s ‘Rural Weeks’

Barry Sheppard

15           Beyond the pale? Representations of the Teddy boy subculture  in Irish theatre, 1955–1965

Ciara Molloy

16        Politics and the praxis of power: the political establishment  and the talented young in post-world war II Ireland

Tomas Finn

17        ‘To Hell or to Connaught’: Margaret Thatcher, Northern Ireland and the Prospect of Repartition, 1979–1990

                Stephen Kelly

We are delighted to announce that a volume based on some of the papers given at the 33rd Irish Conference of Historians is now in print:

Abstract:

The debates on borders and their management are not a modern phenomenon, harnessed to the rise of the nation state. Borders had already been carefully discussed and negotiated in early modern times. The present volume will respond to recent trends in the historiography of early modern borders, boundaries, and their management from a European perspective. Three important strands have informed recent scholarship on early modern borders: firstly, the study of borders in the context of concepts of sovereignty, territoriality, and the law. Secondly, a praxeological approach to border management analysing the instruments and methods of bordering also in the context of changing spheres and practices of knowledge-production. Thirdly, the study of borders within the framework of migration and mobility studies. These approaches, which are sometimes addressed together in overlapping research, will be discussed in the articles brought together in this volume.

For more details and to purchase, please visit: https://wehrhahn-verlag.de/public/index.php?ID_Section=2&ID_Category=75&ID_Product=1655