Dr Sorcha O’Brien
Lecturer in Design History & Theory, IADT, Dun Laoghaire
Dr. O’Brien is a design historian interested in technology and identity, in both 3D physical and digital forms. With a background in industrial and digital design, she is interested in issues surrounding the design of electrical appliances, computers and networked devices at work and in the home. She completed her AHRC-funded PhD on the representation of electrical technology in 1920s Ireland at the University of Brighton, which was published in 2017 by Irish Academic Press as Powering the Nation: Images of the Shannon Scheme and Electricity in Ireland. Dr O’Brien was the curator of the exhibition Kitchen Power: Women’s Experiences of Rural Electrification, which ran in the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life from July 2019 to December 2020, as part of her AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellow, through Kingston University.
The Kitchen Power research project looks at electrical ‘labour saving’ appliances in the Irish home in the wake of rural electrification in the 1950s and 1960s. Influenced by Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s groundbreaking More Work for Mother (1983), it focuses on the intersection of gender roles, electrical technology and ideas about domesticity in the rural kitchen. As a design historian, Dr O’Brien uses objects and advertisements as a way into the analysis of housewives and their appliances, as well as the organisational, educational and networking roles of the ESB and the Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA). As well as the NMI exhibition, the project included a number of oral history interviews, and a collaborative textile art project with Age & Opportunity and women in the Castlebar area, and she is currently working on the accompanying book.
Registration via Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/dRobrIcqQoedCTNFbPNpcQ