‘The Foyle, the Chesapeake, and a fifty-year transatlantic conversation: Getting the measure of the Moore family archive, 1798-1847′

Thursday 23 April at 6pm. In-person at 27 University Square, 01/003, Queen’s University Belfast, and Online via Teams

Emigrant letters have long been an important source for studying the evolution of the Irish diaspora–and have indeed helped to shape the idea of a diaspora.  After briefly reviewing the recent literature on the emigrant letter, the talk will focus on a single collection that has heretofore attracted almost no notice: the Moore papers, a collection of some 900 letters, most of which  remained until recently in private hands, their survival a story in itself.  The collection documents a two-way transatlantic conversation, principally between Derry city and Baltimore, that involved two generations of an extended bourgeois family, and in the case of the central characters it spans their whole adult lives.  Taken together the letters give a unique insight into an extended family of readers, affectionate gossipers and canny observers of a changing Ireland and a changing America.  The geographical fracturing of the Moore family as a result of 1798, some staying in Ireland, others making a go of it in Maryland, created a transatlantic network of family and friends that was held together by often anxious, sometimes exuberant exchanges reflecting intense bonds of affection, and the survival of this extraordinary conversation on paper provides insights that may be of wider relevance. 

David Dickson is Professor Emeritus of Modern History in Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.  He has published extensively on the social, economic and cultural history of Ireland since the seventeenth century, with a recurring interest in the regions.   Past projects have ranged from famine, estate history, eighteenth-century urbanization to the 1798 rebellion and Ireland’s entanglement with empire.  Major publications have included Old world colony: Cork and South Munster 1630-1830 (Cork & Madison, 2005); Dublin: The making of a capital city (London & Cambridge, MA, 2014), and The first Irish cities: An eighteenth-century transformation (New Haven & London, 2021).  He has recently published chapters in Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean, eds. Finola O’Kane & Ciaran O’Neill (Manchester, 2023) and in Waterford and the wider world 1575-1825, ed. John Bergin et al. (Dublin, 2026), and an essay on ‘Dublin port in times of famine’ in the Dublin Historical Record, 78 (2025).  He is currently part of a team of five editors that have prepared The Moore letters for publication by the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

Image: Samuel Moore at work, c. 1835

Registration link to follow

‘Ulster women in business and  bankruptcy, 1888-1922’

Thursday 5 March 2026, at 6pm in Institute of Irish Studies, 27 University Square, 01/003, Queen’s University. Belfast and Online. All welcome.

Bankruptcy records held at PRONI contain a multiplicity of Irish women’s stories. Detailed financial records show patterns of supply and trading, the extension of credit, recourse to borrowing, and illustrate the constant battle to balance outgoings with income. Schedules of assets give an insight into the material culture of a business, and vividly depict how a woman’s public commercial life could be entangled with her private domestic life. Antonia Hart introduces us to the lives and work of the beleaguered businesswomen across Antrim and Down whose businesses were captured in this valuable archive between 1888 and 1922, and considers the new ways in which we can reflect on Irish women’s lives thanks to these records.

Antonia Hart’s research interests centre on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish social and economic history, with a focus on women’s history. She completed her PhD, funded by an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, at Trinity College Dublin in 2021, as a graduate fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute. Her doctoral thesis examined Irish women in business, which is also the subject of her new book Business as Usual: the commercial lives of Irish women, 1850-1922, (Liverpool University Press, 2025). Her previous books include Ghost Signs of Dublin (History Press Ireland, 2014); and, with Arthur Edward Guinness, Guinness: A Family Succession (Scala, 2025). Recent shorter publications include ‘Taking the Pledge: women and pawnbroking in nineteenth-century Ireland’, in Jennifer Redmond and Mary McAuliffe, eds., The Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2024); ‘Fire at the South City Market’, in Sarah Binchy ed., Sunday Miscellany A Selection 2023-2025 (New Island, 2025); and ‘Sole Trader’, in Nessa O’Mahony, ed., Tearing Stripes off Zebras: forty years of women writing in Ireland (Arlen House, 2023). She has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, working on the Trinity Colonial Legacies project, and a lecturer in History of Education at Maynooth University. She is currently Dublin City Council Culture Company Historian-in-Residence for Dublin South East.

Thursday 4 December at 6pm (27 University Square 01/003, Queen’s University Belfast, and online).

You are very welcome to the final USIHS seminar of 2025 when Dr Henry Jefferies will speak on Irish women and the Reformation. This is a free event open to all.

The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century represented the greatest religious crisis in European history since the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity in the fourth century. Protestant reformers characterised the Catholic Church as an evil entity headed by the Antichrist, with doctrines and religious practices that were false. The Reformers looked to the ‘Word of God’, the Bible, to recreate the Church of Jesus de novo. They confronted women with a choice that was more important than simply a question of life and death – it concerned life after death! The Bible was clear as to how a woman was supposed to make her choice: 

“If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home”. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 ESV.

“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet”. 1 Timothy 2:11-14 ESV

This paper looks at the responses of Irish women to the Reformation. It reveals that despite the Bible’s injunctions, they exercised considerable agency, perhaps even decisive agency, in the religious struggles of the sixteenth century.

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USIHS Seminar. Online only, Thursday 13 November at 7pm.

Building to feel ‘at home’: Embedding/embedded memory in the built environments of Belfast and the diaspora.

This paper will explore the varied ways that parishioners, particularly female parishioners, have used and ‘put their mark’ on religious buildings to facilitate a sense of belonging in Ireland and abroad. Drawing on research from Sophie’s ‘Mapping Belfast’s Places of Worship’ project and her wider work on migrant belonging in the Irish diaspora, this paper explores some of the ways that people in the past used their built environments to feel ‘at home’. It will also consider some of the ways that demographic shifts have led to the repurposing or changing use of these buildings – and the (not so) hidden histories that they have embedded in them.

Dr Sophie Cooper is President of the Ulster Society of Irish Historical Studies and Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts at Queen’s University Belfast. She is a historian of Ireland and the Irish diaspora in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sophie’s first book Forging Identities in the Irish World: Melbourne and Chicago, c.1830-1922, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022 and won the ACIS Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize for Books on Irish America.

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Thursday 16 October: 6pm (27 University Square/01/003 (QUB) and online via Teams)

Seán Ó Hoireabhárd (Maynooth University), ‘When Ulster became Ulster and Meath became Meath: The divorce of the Northern and Southern Uí Néill in the Central Middle Ages’

Free event – all welcome!

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Abstract:

The Uí Néill dynasty were the most important political collective in medieval Ireland. From the very beginning of recorded history down to the seventeenth century and the end of the Gaelic order, their leading men were consistently among the most powerful on the island. They controlled both the midlands and north-west Ulster, and their literary output and propaganda promoted the notion that ‘Tara’ was a metonym for Ireland – and so, to be ‘king of Tara’ meant to be ‘king of Ireland’. The Southern and Northern branches of the dynasty alternated in this role, and while it was at times more aspirational than demonstrable, there were kings of Tara who manifested their authority across the island, convincing even their most trenchant enemies of their prestige. But the system of alternating kingship that worked so well to cement their power failed around the turn of the millennium, and by the twelfth century new identities prevailed. ‘Mide’, ‘Meath’, literally ‘Middle’ came to be seen as a province stretching from the Shannon to the sea, while an idea of a province called ‘the North’, which reached from coast to coast also began to be articulated. Ultimately, this acquired the name of an older identity, ‘Ulster’. This paper looks at the political successes and failures of the Uí Néill in the Central Middle Ages, asking how their common identity broke down and considering how new ones took their place.

Prof. Laura Kelly (University of Strathclyde):

‘The Anti-Abortion Movement in Ireland, c.1972-92’

Thursday 22 May 2025, 6pm, at PRONI.

This lecture explores the history of anti-abortion activism in Ireland from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Utilising oral history interviews with activists and a range of rich archival sources including anti-abortion publications, government archives, diocesan records and contemporary newspapers, it traces the history of one of the most significant social movements in Ireland. Drawing on approaches from the history of emotions, oral history, and gender history, it discusses show how and why the anti-abortion movement gained such strength in 1970s and 1980s Ireland, what motivated ‘ordinary’ people to get involved in it, the campaigns and strategies of activists, and what its success and ultimate decline reveal about wider changes in Irish society. I will argue that transnational networks, particularly between Irish and American activists, were crucial to the success of the movement in its early years. Ultimately, by illuminating the experiences, motivations, and strategies of anti-abortion activists, this paper helps to better contextualise the wider battle around reproductive rights in Ireland, and the ongoing legacy of this activism.

The J.C. Beckett Annual Lecture is hosted by the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies. This is a free public event, all welcome.

Register at: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-anti-abortion-movement-in-ireland-c1972-92-tickets-1291413485499

20 March 2025 at 7pm (online only via Teams)

Prof. Cara Delay (University of South Carolina): ‘Transnational Mothering in the era of the Great Famine’

Dr. Cara Delay, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina, holds degrees from Boston College and Brandeis University. Her research analyzes health, gender, and culture in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth. Her award-winning body of scholarship includes more than 30 scholarly journal articles and chapters. She is also author or co-author of Women, Reform, and Resistance in Ireland, 1850-1950 (Palgrave), Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism, 1850-1950 (Manchester), Birth Control: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford), and Catching Fire: Women’s Health Activism in Ireland and the Global Movement for Reproductive Justice (Oxford). A Fulbright scholar, she also has received awards or fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, Nursing Clio, and the Donnelly Foundation. She teaches courses in women’s health, women’s history, and reproduction.

REGISTER AT: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/usihs-seminar-transnational-mothering-in-the-era-of-the-great-famine-tickets-1194962417759?aff=oddtdtcreator

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