Economic and Social History Society of Ireland Annual Conference 2026

This conference will feature more than fifty papers on Irish economic and social history by emerging and established scholars. The conference will also include the K.H. Connell Memorial Lecture by Professof James Kelly of Dublin City University. Day 1: Level 1 Trinity Business School, Pearse Street Day 2: Arts Building See the full programme below and at https://www.eshsi.org/conferences.html Friday 4th December All sessions will take place on level 1 of the Trinity Business School 9.00am Registration 9.30-11.00am PANEL 1 Stephen Kennedy (University of Galway) The Irish Tenants’ Protection Society: grassroots activism and rent controls for Dublin’s working-class, 1934-1944 Filippo Barsi (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) Translating ‘industrial democracy’: a contested category in the Irish Labour Movement, 1897-1923 Suzanne Jobling (Queen’s University Belfast) ‘Worth more pay than your husband?’: attitudes towards women workers revealed in newspaper coverage of employment equality cases PANEL 2 Seán Fenton (Trinity College Dublin) Living with the falling sickness: epilepsy, social circumstances and institutional care in late nineteenth-century Dublin Sorcha Clarke (University of Galway) Experiences of female, upper-class lunacy in early twentieth-century Ireland: the case of Stella Moutray Ciarán Casey (University of Limerick) The economics of mental hospital committals in twentieth-century Ireland PANEL 3 Antonina Stankova (University of Galway) and Cathal O’Donoghue (University of Galway) Between independence and economic development: reconstructing the Irish production system, 1926-1956 Anna Devlin (Trinity College Dublin) The economics of peace-making in the Irish Free State during the 1920s and 1930s Desmond Gibney (National College of Ireland) Municipal bonds in Ireland: the historical experience and potential for the future 11.00am Break 11.20am-12.50pm PANEL 4 Natasha Mahony (Independent scholar) Hogs and hearths: a gendered analysis of medieval Dublin wills Libor Melioris (Trinity College Dublin) Wealth distribution and social mobility in Ireland 1880-1980: new evidence from probate, census and marriage records Gregory Walls (Trinity College Dublin) Finding ‘the story of us’: the 1926 Census PANEL 5 Oluwaseun Williams (University College Dublin) Irish scientists and veterinary development in Africa: the career of Robert Pearson Lee in British Tanganyika and Nigeria Ella Armstrong (Trinity College Dublin) Labouring to learn: obstetric education in Dublin 1950-2000 Kevin Finnan (Dublin City University) Identifying the doctors: treating the IRA during the war of independence PANEL 6 Martin Quinn (Queen’s University Belfast) Clientalism and the wiring of rural Ireland: TDs as brokers in the rural electrification scheme Peter Connell (Independent scholar) ‘The government wants a terrible lot of light’. Clearing the ‘slums’ and rehousing in 1930s Kilrush, Co. Clare Maria Kane (Trinity College Dublin) ‘Earning their bread by their own exertions’: the Irish White Cross Parish Committee, Enniscorthy 1921-22 12.50-1.00pm Launch of the New Society Webpage 1.00-2.00pm Lunch and Postgraduate Meeting 2.00-3.50pm PANEL 7 A panel based on the ERC project VOICES: Voices of women in Early Modern Ireland Speakers: Jane Ohlmeyer Daniel Patterson Claire McNulty Felix Vanden Bore Bronagh McShane Michael Flaherty Donal Farrell (Trinity College Dublin) PANEL 8 Maeve Hagerty (University of Edinburgh) Locating the Irish witch: folklore, modernity, and gendered magic belief in Ireland, c. 1880-1945 Christopher West (University of Aberdeen) ‘Hutchings’ Angels’: an odd rector or a rector at odds? Fionnuala Walsh (University College Dublin) Atheists, freethinkers and rationalists: explorations of ‘unbelief’ in early twentieth-century Ireland Peter Gray (Queen’s University Belfast) Presbyterianism and land reform, c. 1845-57 PANEL 9 Charles Read (Oxford) Gender, economic policy and the politics of Irish manufacturing in the 1840s Adam Kane (University College Dublin) Investing in times of trial: Irish women, finance, and the Famine, c. 1840-1852 Rebecca O’Regan (University of Limerick) Accounting for networks: how financial records can be used to reconstruct women’s socio-economic communities in the mid-west of Ireland, 1850-1860 Kathleen O’Sullivan (Independent scholar) Becoming Dublin's Dior: Sybil Connolly, women’s networks and the making of an international fashion house 3.50-4.00pm Break 4.00-5.00pm PANEL 10 Rebecca Mowbray (Queen’s University Belfast) ‘Keep in step’? Gender, conflict and Northern Irish educational policymaking, 1965-1972 Aislinn Hoy (Trinity College Dublin) Till deaths do us part? Childhood exposure to group-motivated violence and intergroup relationship formation in Northern Ireland PANEL 11 Lianglu Wu (University of Galway) ‘Do like other women did’: mobilities, intimacy and the lives of the ‘wrens of the Curragh’ Máire Hussey (Trinity College Dublin) ‘I was very surprised how very naïve she is’: a microhistory of Irish migration and sex work in late twentieth-century London PANEL 12 Scott McCarthy (Deakin University) Class, gender, and socialisation in the settle diaspora: Australia, 1875-1914 Emer O’Brien (University College Dublin) Self-strengthening in Ireland and the world: transnational racial discourses and the social world of Irish-Ireland, 1902-1912 5.00-6.00pm The K.H.