In the final episode of this series, we are shining a light on undergraduate historical research. Emily Little, who has recently completed her BA at Maynooth University, discusses the subject of her undergraduate dissertation which examined the lives of Joan Fitzgerald and Gráinne Ní Mháille, two women from early modern Ireland.

Emily Little graduated with a BA in History and English at Maynooth University in 2025. She is currently undertaking a Professional Masters of Education programme but hopes to return to historical research in the future.Emily is joined in today's episode by her supervisor, Dr Niamh Wycherley, who is Assistant Professor in Early Irish History across the Departments of Early Irish and History at Maynooth University. She hosts The Medieval Irish History Podcast and is the first Chair of the Royal Irish Academy's Young Academy Ireland. 

In this episode, Constantin Torve discusses his research on agrarian protest in 19th century Ireland, through the case-study of Edward Synge.

Constantin Torve (MA, Uppsala) is a PhD student in history at Queen's University Belfast. His ESRC-funded research project investigates the adaptation of agrarian secret societies in 19th-century Ireland to changing socio-economic environments.

Dr Jay Roszman is a lecturer in 19th century Irish and British History at University College Cork, a position he took up in 2018. His first book, Outrage in the Age of Reform: Irish Agrarian Violence, Imperial Insecurity, and British Governing Policy 1830-1845 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. In addition to writing about the political meaning of agrarian violence and its political consequences, Jay is also interested in imperialism and Irish involvement in the British Empire. He has a forthcoming article with English Historical Review on Daniel O’Connell, Irish Nationalism, and British Imperial Trouble. His new project explores the Queen’s Colleges and their relationship with the British Empire: training men for imperial careers, but also as institutions that reflected British imperial interests in Ireland and abroad.

In this episode, Samantha Morris sheds light on the history and living heritage of Borris Lace-making. Samantha is joined by Ingelise Stuijts and Helena McAteer who are actively involved in preserving the tradition of Borris Lace. Samantha Morris is a PhD student at TU Dublin, funded by the Irish Research Council and supervised by Dr Bernadette Quinn and Dr Theresa Ryan. Her research focuses on Borris Lace as a form of living heritage, exploring how craft can help us understand the multiple meanings of place.

Ingelise Stuijts and Helena McAteer are members of the Borris Lacemakers group, actively involved in sustaining and promoting the tradition through teaching, exhibitions, community projects, and schools-based initiatives. Both have played key roles in keeping Borris Lace alive since its 2016 revival.

To keep up-to-date with the Borris Lacemakers group, visit their website here.

 In this episode, Remy Biggs discusses his research on women in the resistance during the Italian Civil War through the case study of Joyce Lussu.

Remy Biggs is a historian and information professional entering his final year of study for his PhD at Trinity College Dublin under Dr. Molly Pucci. His thesis focuses mainly upon internal colonialism and its impact upon Italian Marxist thinkers and antifascist resistance efforts in southern Italy. He can be reached at [email protected] for further information. 

Welcome to the third series of the Irish History Students' Association podcast. 

In the first episode of this series, Katherine Ingram discusses the nature, causes and consequences of suffrage militancy in the north of Ireland at the start of 1913, and compares it to suffragettes’ militant activity elsewhere in the UK.

Katherine Ingram is a History PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on cooperation and conflict in the women’s suffrage movement in the UK between 1900 and 1918. In particular, it considers the effect that suffrage militancy, suffragists’ relations with political parties, and war had on unity in the cause. Katherine graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and History, and in 2021 with a Master of Arts in History.

Bluesky account: @kating03.bsky.social

X: @KatIng03

In the final episode of this series, Maria Zukovs discusses her research on Franco-Irish relations with Dr Jacob Baxter.

Maria Zukovs is a final year PhD candidate in the School of History at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on Dublin press coverage of the French Revolution. It seeks to understand what, if any, impact the French Revolution had on contemporaneous Dublin society, politics and culture. Maria has been the recipient of grants and bursaries from the Society for the Study of French History, the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society and Marsh's Library.

Dr Jacob Baxter is the Deputy Director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue at the University of St Andrews. He defended his PhD, which focused on the English diplomat Sir William Temple, in April 2024. Jacob's research interests include statement, readers and copyright. 

In this episode, Dr Olivia Frehill and Dr Sarah Roddy discuss the topic of methodology and historical research. 

Dr Olivia Frehill recently completed a funded PhD in History at Trinity College Dublin entitled 'Silhouettes in a City: Women, Work and Welfare in Dublin, c.1890-1930s'. She has published on some of her research in outlets such as Irish Economic and Social History and RTÉ Brainstorm. She currently works as a research assistant and teaching assistant. 

Dr Sarah Roddy is an Associate Professor in Modern Irish Social History. Before arriving at Maynooth in January 2021, she spent 9 years as, successively, Research Assistant, Hallsworth Research Fellow, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Modern Irish History at the University of Manchester. Her doctorate and MA were completed at Queen's University Belfast and her undergraduate degree in History and Politics is from the University of Limerick.

Dr Roddy's research interests lie in modern Irish and British social, economic and religious history. Her current project, entitled 'Visible Divinity: Money and Irish Catholicism, 1850-1921', is a transnational examination of the financial relationship between the Irish Catholic Church and its laity, and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK; a monograph is under contract with Cambridge University Press. 

In this week's episode, Keely Farrell and Kate Ryan adopt a gender approach to the history of food, in particular butter making in Ireland.

Keely Farrell is a postgraduate student at Trinity College Dublin studying Public History and Cultural Heritage. Inspiration for this episode came from a paper written for a course titled, Food, Drink and European Cultural Identities. In a similar realm, Keely has worked at Spritmuseum, a museum centering on the cultural history of drinking in Sweden and has developed tour content on Christmas food traditions at the Montclair History Center in New Jersey. She is a member of Phi Alpha Theta, a History Honor Society in the U.S. Most of her research focuses on early African American and U.S. history with a recent dissertation on the public involvement in searching for and discovering slave shipwrecks globally.

Kate Ryan is a multi-award-winning food writer and founder of Flavour.ie, a platform dedicated to promoting Irish Food. Kate is a food features writer for The Echo and The Irish Examiner newspapers, and her articles have also featured with BBC, Vittles, Sunday Business Post, Food & Wine Magazine (Ireland), Scoop Food Magazine, among many others in print and online. She also writes on her blog, The Flavour Files. In 2017, she published 'A taste of west Cork - artisan food guide', a project funded by Cork County Council and Taste Cork.

Her paper 'Perfectly civilised and proper' – the social and cultural history of blood as food in Ireland' was selected for inclusion in the Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2023.

In this episode, Emer O'Brien discusses her research on Irish nationalism and the Boer War.

Emer O'Brien is a fourth year PhD student with University College Dublin's School of History. Her thesis focuses on Irish nationalism and ideas around whiteness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through to the War of Independence, investigating how Irish nationalists adapted global discourses of race for their own campaigns. She is a recipient of the Universities Ireland Centenaries bursary

Dr Irial Glynn teaches migration history at University College Dublin. He is also the co-editor of historyhub.ie and hosts a series on the history of nativism. 

In this episode, Helen Doyle discusses her research on the Irish District Asylum system with her PhD supervisor, Dr Dympna McLoughlin.

Helen Doyle is a third year PhD student with the History Department at Maynooth University, where she is also a graduate teaching assistant with Academic Writing Support. Her thesis is titled ‘The Impact of the Criminal Lunatic (Ireland) Act 1838 on committal numbers to Irish district lunatic asylums’ and is examining the role of key-players involved in committal of ‘dangerous lunatics’ to Irish district asylums. Her research is also investigating the link between the stigma associated with mental illness in Ireland today, and the passing of this legislation that first linked insanity with crime, danger, fear and threat to society.  

Dr Dympna McLoughlin is a lecturer at the History Department, Maynooth University. 

In this episode Pearce Magee discusses his research on anti-lynching campaigns with Dr Melissa Baird.

Pearce Magee is a final-year PhD student at Queen's University Belfast, with a BA and MA in History. His research examines efforts to achieve the passage of a federal anti-lynching law in the United States, aiming to shed light on an important, yet often overlooked, chapter in American history and the fight for racial justice. Pearce has lectured on Lynching and the "Long Civil Rights Movement" at Queens and has presented his work at both the Barnes conference in Philadelphia and the annual HOTCUS conference. More recently, Pearce was chosen to participate in the Heidelberg Centre for American Studies’ Spring Academy, where he presented a chapter of his thesis and had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the world’s most exciting young researchers in the field of American Studies. Additionally, Pearce is a member of the Digital Learning team at Queen's University Belfast, working to improve the digital capabilities of students across the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHSS).

Melissa Baird is Assistant Editor with the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) series at the Royal Irish Academy. She is an historian of modern Irish and American history, and her PhD examined the relationship between the Irish diaspora in the United States and the Northern Irish civil rights movement. Her research interests include civil rights, social movements, transnationalism, diplomacy, and popular culture in twentieth-century Ireland and the United States. Melissa has lectured on Irish and American history at Queen's University, Belfast, and co-ordinated several public history projects at the Linen Hall library.

In this episode, Robin Gatel discusses the influence of anti-heretical speech in Gerald of Wales' Topographia Hibernica.

Robin Gatel is a final year Ph.D student in medieval history at Trinity College Dublin where he teaches History as a teaching assistant. His research primarily focuses on the evolution of the anti-heretical rhetorics during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Through confronting different regional accounts, Robin Gatel is keen to demonstrate how the anti-heretical literature of the High Middle Ages can be used to approach a wide variety of topics. 

In this opening episode of series two, Tom McGrath and Sandrine Tromeur discuss their research on Irish migration.

Tom McGrath is an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar in the Department of History at Maynooth University. His thesis, entitled ‘An examination of the Irish in South Africa, c.1921–61’, seeks to further our understanding of the Irish South African community by examining how the development of Ireland, Northern Ireland and South Africa impacted upon the relatively small Irish population on the southern tip of Africa.

Sandrine Tromeur is a PhD candidate at Maynooth University. Her research explores the history of the Irish community in La Rochelle (1602-1789), and focuses on Irish men and women’s experiences of migration and integration in their receiving society.

In this episode, Dr. Laura Brown discusses the topic of 'imperial encounters; understanding the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan'. She is joined by Dr. David Murphy who is a lecturer in Military History and Strategic Studies at Maynooth University. Dr. Brown lectures at the Military College in the Defence Forces Training Centre in the Curragh, Co. Kildare. In 2021 she was awarded a PhD for her thesis on the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. As an historian her research interests include military history, imperialism and material culture. 

In this episode, Dr. Declan Monaghan speaks with Gerry Tully about his PhD research on the 'origins and history of the Irish National Stud 1900-2021'.

Declan Monaghan recently completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Terence Dooley at the Department of History at Maynooth University.

In this episode, Judy Bolger speaks about her academic research on breastfeeding. She is joined by Professor Elaine Farrell (QUB) and Dr Jennifer Redmond (MU) who chat about their experiences on returning to work in academia as new mothers.

Judy Bolger is in her final stages of submitting her PhD thesis at Trinity College, Dublin. Her thesis assesses the public and official discourse relating to motherhood and poverty in nineteenth-century Ireland. This project was funded by the Trinity College, Dublin 1252 studentship award. Her research has been published in Birth and the Irish: a miscellany (2021), ed. by Salvador Ryan. She also works as an academic tutor at Carlow College, St Patrick’s.  If you would like to contact Judy about her research, please email [email protected]