‘Spreading VD all over Connacht’: reproductive rights and wrongs in 1970s Galway

While the social climate in 1970s urban Ireland was favourable for proponents of contraception, there were obstacles, and activism in the cause might have consequences for the individuals concerned. Galway […]

The rise and fall of local democracy

The term ‘municipal revolution’ was coined by Sidney and Beatrix Webb to describe the nineteenth-century transformation of borough corporations in England and Wales, and was first applied to Ireland by […]

‘The loveliest thing ever made by an Irishman’: Harry Clarke’s Geneva Window

Harry Clarke was the leading stained glass artist of his day. Mainly working on churches, most notably UCC’s Honan Chapel, he was also well known as a book illustrator. After […]

Colleens, cottages and kraals:the politics of ‘native’ village exhibitions

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fake ‘native’ villages—often African but also sometimes Far Eastern—were hugely popular attractions throughout Europe and America at great exhibitions or fairs. They […]

Ireland in the ‘age of improvement’

Thomas Kearney’s 1817 map of the Levinge estate in Knockdrin, Co. Westmeath, is a particularly fine example of an early nineteenth-century survey of an improving landlord’s estate during the twilight […]