‘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.