Category: News & Events

ERIN documents two of Thomas Moore’s song series – the Irish Melodies (1808-1834) and National Airs (1818-1827) – as well as music inspired by his ‘oriental romance’ Lalla Rookh (1817). ERIN enables the user to track the production and dissemination of these works in Europe, from their respective dates of creation through to 1880. Any contributors to this process (composers, arrangers, editors, illustrators, engravers, publishers, etc.) are indexed or tagged as part of the project. All of ERIN’s resources are now available at www.erin.qub.ac.uk. This website unites the previously available blog and OMEKA resources with some new features, including podcasts and a catalogue that unites the collections of eight European repositories. ERIN was co-produced by Dr Tríona O’Hanlon (Dublin) and Dr Sarah McCleave (Queen’s University Belfast).

To complement ERIN’s launch, the exhibition, ‘Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe’ is on display at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin from 17 June to 23 December 2019. ‘Discovering Thomas Moore’ is curated by Dr Sarah McCleave (Queen’s University Belfast). For further information about this exhibition and a series of complementary lectures on Thomas Moore, visit: https://www.ria.ie/discovering-thomas-moore-ireland-nineteenth-century-europe-0

The fifth biennial conference of the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia will take place in Canberra, Australia on 21-23 November 2019.

The conference theme is ‘Embodying Romanticism’ and proposals are now invited for 20-minute papers on any aspects of Romanticism and embodiment. Proposals may be for individual papers or for panels of 3-4 papers. Postgraduate bursaries are available.

See the conference website for the call for papers and further details:
https://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/conferences/rsaa

HA Maritime People? A Conversation on the Irish at Sea

With a panel of guest speakers chaired by Tommy Graham, editor of History Ireland Saturday 16 March 2019, 15:00–16:30 in the vaults, CHQ building, Custom House Quay, Dublin 1 

In 1986, the prominent maritime historian John de Courcy Ireland wrote: ‘the lives of island peoples like Ireland’s [have] been dominated by the seas encircling them. Yet this fact has been largely ignored by Irish historians.’ This History Ireland Hedge School asks why, three decades later, Ireland’s maritime history and heritage continues to be under-valued. Panellists will reflect on the potential of a better appreciation of Irish maritime history and heritage, to help improve understanding of Ireland’s relationships with the wider world over past centuries and into the future.
Panel: Dr Lar Joye, Dublin Port Authority; Dr David Murphy, Maynooth University; Dr Marie-Louise Coolahan, NUI Galway; Dr Angela Byrne, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. 

All welcome. Booking essential at https://www.stpatricksfestival.ie/events/event/history_ireland_hedge_school_a_maritime_people_a_conversation_on_the_irish

Marsh’s Library PG bursary (EUR300)

A bursary awarded by Marsh’s library in Dublin to the value of EUR300 towards conference costs (this may be used to pay for registration, conference dinner, accommodation and / or travel costs). This bursary is awarded to a student currently registered for PhD study and who has a paper accepted for the conference. Please signal when submitting an abstract that you would like to be considered for the Marsh’s Library bursary.

Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society bursaries (conference registration, conference dinner, and EICS membership)

Three ECIS bursaries for a student currently registered for PhD study and who has a paper accepted for the conference. Please signal when submitting an abstract that you would like to be considered for an ECIS PG bursary. These bursaries cover the following costs: conference fee, conference dinner, one year’s membership of the Society (including copies of the Society’s Journal, Eighteenth-Century Ireland Vol. 31 and Vol. 32).

PhD students should apply to present at the ECIS 2019 conference in the usual way and include with their abstract a short statement (maximum 500 words) on why presenting at the conference is important for your research.

A panel comprising three members of the executive committee of the Society will review all applications after the deadline for papers (Monday 29^th April 2019) and will notify successful applicants by email on Friday 10 May.

Submission of proposals for papers

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to Moyra Haslett ([email protected]) before Monday 29 April 2019. Proposals should include: name, institutional affiliation, paper title, and a 250-word abstract. See our annual conference page for full details of the Call for Papers. Prospective speakers will be notified of a decision by Monday 6 May 2019.

Proposals are now invited for twenty-minute papers (in English or Irish) on any aspect of eighteenth-century Ireland, including its history, literature, language, and culture.

There is no specific conference theme, but proposals for papers and panels addressing the following topics will be particularly welcome:

• Eighteenth-century Belfast
• Ireland and Europe
• Music and performance

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to Moyra Haslett ([email protected]) before Monday 29 April 2019. Proposals should include: name, institutional affiliation, paper title, and a 250-word abstract.

Prospective speakers will be notified of a decision by Monday 6 May 2019.

Cuirfear fáilte ar leith roimh pháipéir agus/nó roimh phainéil iomlána i nGaeilge ar ghné ar bith de shaol agus de shaíocht na Gaeilge san Ochtú Céad Déag. Iarrtar ar dhaoine ar mhaith leo páipéar 20 nóiméad a léamh, teideal an pháipéir mar aon le hachoimre ghairid (250 focal) a sheoladh chuig Moyra Haslett ([email protected]) roimh 29 Aibreán 2019. Cuirfear scéala chuig cainteoirí roimh an Luan an 6 Bealtaine 2019.

Download the call for papers

The A.C. Elias Irish-American Research Travel Fellowship of ASECS, with $2500 in annual funding, supports “documentary scholarship on Ireland in the period between the Treaty of Limerick (1691) and the Act of Union (1800),” by enabling North American-based scholars to pursue research in Ireland and Irish-based scholars, in North America.  Projects conducting original research on any aspect of eighteenth-century Ireland qualify for consideration, but recipients must be members of ASECS with permanent residence in the United States or Canada or be members of its Irish sister organization, the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, with residence in Ireland. Prize winners are chosen by an independent jury from different disciplines and applications are evaluated by several anonymous readers in the applicant’s field.

The next A.C. Elias Jr. Research Travel Fellowship will be awarded at the end of 2019, with applications due on 15 November 2019 to the fellowship’s two trustees: 

Dr. Jason McElligott, Director, Marsh’s Library, St. Patrick’s Close, Dublin 8, Ireland ([email protected]) and Dr. James May ([email protected]), 1423 Hillcrest Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17603, USA.

Applications should consist of the coversheet downloaded at the ASECS travel-fellowship website (https://asecs.press.jhu.edu/general%20site/travelgr.html), a short curriculum vitae, a narrative description of the project (3 pp. or less, treating its contribution to the field and work done and to be done during the proposed research period), a one-page bibliography of related studies, a short budget, and two signed letters of recommendation.

Further information is available at ASECS’s website or from the trustees. 

RDS Library & Archives invites you to attend the RDS Library Speaker Series talk ‘Rags, Riches & Recycling; the Dublin Society’s encouragement of art & artefacts, 1731-1781’ by Dr Claudia Kinmouth on Wednesday 31 October at 6.30pm in the RDS Library, followed by a wine reception.

Dr Claudia Kinmouth, author and design historian, is the recipient of the RDS Library & Archives Research Bursary 2018. She is Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellow, NUI Galway and was elected a member of the RIA in March 2018. Her previous publications include Irish Rural Interiors in Art (2006) and Irish Country Furniture 1770-1950 (1993)

Please RSVP via email
library [email protected]
or call +353 (0)1 2407254

Bookings can also be made online: http://www.rds.ie/Whats-On/Event/37038

Irish Political Writings after 1725: A Modest Proposal and Other Works edited by David Hayton and Adam Rounce is the latest volume of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift and the first fully annotated edition of Swift’s Irish prose writings from 1726 to 1737.

The book will be launched at 7.30pm on Wednesday, 26 September 2018 at Armagh Robinson Library. Professor Andrew Carpenter will be guest speaker at the event and there will be an opportunity to purchase copies of the book, signed by Professor David Hayton.

Refreshments will be kindly provided by Ulster University.

RSVP by 21 September 2018 via e-mail: [email protected] or telephone: 028 37523142

The 23rd Sligo Festival of Baroque Music will run from 28 – 30 September 2018.

The 2018 festival will focus on the work that would have been heard in mid-18th century Dublin and Dresden.

Visit the festival website www.sligobaroquefestival.com for further information.

Scholars in any academic discipline are invited to submit abstracts of papers to be presented at the Irish Philosophy in the Age of Berkeley conference, to be held in Trinity College Dublin, 5 and 6 April 2019.

George Berkeley’s Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) are standard texts in the philosophy curricula of most European and American universities. No other Irish philosopher, and no other work of Berkeley’s, has achieved this ‘canonical’ status. However, there was a vibrant philosophical scene in Ireland in Berkeley’s lifetime, to which Berkeley was far from the only contributor. Studying this broader Irish philosophical discussion will improve our understanding of Berkeley and also of early modern philosophy more generally.

The Irish Philosophy in the Age of Berkeley conference will include general exploration of the intellectual culture of early modern Ireland as well as examination of specific thinkers with significant connections to Ireland active during Berkeley’s lifetime (1685–1753). Such figures include Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh (1615–1691); Robert Boyle (1627–1691); Michael Moore (c. 1639–1726); William King (1650–1729); William Molyneux (1656–1698); Edward Synge (1659–1741); Jonathan Swift (1667–1745); John Toland (1670–1722); Peter Browne (d. 1735); and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746).

Invited speakers will include:

• Lisa Downing, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, USA
• Eric Schliesser, Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Kate Davison, Lecturer in Long Eighteenth-Century History, University of Sheffield, UK
Approximately nine additional papers will be selected by anonymous review of submitted abstracts.

We welcome abstracts from scholars in any discipline addressing one or more of the following issues:

• The Irish context of Berkeley’s philosophy.
• The philosophical work of other Irish thinkers active during Berkeley’s lifetime.
• The reception within Ireland of other philosophical figures, ideas, and movements.
• The reception of Irish philosophy outside Ireland.

Particular preference will be given to papers that address figures and/or topics outside the currently recognized philosophical ‘canon’, including the work of early modern women.
Papers presented at the conference will be published as part of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements series, Cambridge University Press.

Abstracts should be submitted by 15 October, 2018. Full details, including submission instructions, are available at: http://www.tcd.ie/Philosophy/events/IPAB/.

Participants and attendees may also be interested in attending Berkeleian Minds: Will and Understanding, to be held at the University of York on 2 and 3 April (https://philevents.org/event/show/63750).

Primary sponsorship for this conference is provided by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, together with the Mind Association. Additional support is provided by the Trinity Long Room Hub Making Ireland Research Theme and the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin.

Anne-Claire Michoux is a doctoral assistant at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, women’s writing, and national identity. She will be speaking about her work at the ECIS Annual Conference on 8-9 June 2018. 

Favourite archive:
I would love to have the opportunity to do more archival research but I would have to say the Huntington Library so far. Their art gallery and gardens are wonderful.

Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
The Musée d’Orsay. Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire is also worth a visit.

Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
Any event which the Duchess of Devonshire attended. Otherwise, I would be really curious to know what it was really to go to theatre at the time.

Best online resource:
ECCO and the Adam Matthews Digital Archives

Best book of 18th century interest:
It’s really hard to pick one, there are so many, but I would say Deidre Shauna Lynch, The Economy of Character, and Patricia Meyer Spacks’ Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self

What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
Marie Antoinette and Mary Wollstonecraft

What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2016?
My doctoral thesis examines the construction of British national identity in women’s fiction of the Romantic period, with a particular focus on Jane Austen, Frances Burney, and Maria Edgeworth, whose work has become increasingly prominent over the course of my research. The paper I will present at the conference offers a reading of Edgeworth’s last Irish novel, Ormond (1817), and its negotiation of national identity. Edgeworth’s protagonists often have complicated national allegiances and the eponymous Ormond is no exception: an English orphan, he is raised in Ireland by the Irish landlord Sir Ulick O’Shane, who served in the same regiment as his father. As he embarks on a career as an ‘Irish Tom Jones’, the young Ormond develops as a ‘gentleman’, an issue that many novels in the period also dramatized. It is this examination of the figure of the gentleman that is at the heart of the novel’s positioning of its hero as an Irish and British citizen. I will draw connections to Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) and William Shakespeare’s Henriad to demonstrate Edgeworth’s participation in the debates on the nation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Matthew Ward is an Oxford DPhil History Candidate, Vincent Packford and Geoffrey Smart Scholar, Kellogg College. His research looks at Anglo-Irish political thought in the seventeenth  and eighteenth centuries. He is particularly interested in the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his reception in Ireland.  He will be speaking about his work at the ECIS Annual Conference on 8-9 June 2018. 

Favourite archive:
I recently enjoyed a visit to Armagh Robinson Library to consult the Dopping Papers. The De Vesci Collection at the NLI is also amazingly rich.

Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
I really love the Kafka Museum in Prague. The newly refurbished Abbeyleix Heritage House is also very charming.

Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
The 1794 Treason Trials in London.

Best online resource:
Though it might be a rather obvious answer, I couldn’t do without the pamphlet and sermon material available on ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online).

Best book of 18th century interest:
John Robertson, The Case for The Enlightenment.

What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
John Abernethy Sr. Though his might be an orange juice.

What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2016?
My paper will offer an interpretation of Edward Synge’s The case of toleration (1725) and the debate it sparked in Dublin’s public prints. Synge was Prebendary of St Patrick’s, chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant, and was later promoted to the episcopal bench. Though he sprung from the heart of Ireland’s clerical establishment, he was a critic of the penal laws and enjoyed a close relationship with the Presbyterian philosopher Francis Hutcheson. In The case, Synge objected to the use of force to discipline religious disobedience and alleged that the Irish penal laws embodied the coercive politics and religion of Thomas Hobbes in De Cive. Synge’s characterisation touched a nerve in his Anglican critics who responded by identifying the Hobbesian aspects of his own argument. Showing how Hobbes set the terms of discussion of the penal laws in the 1720s, will allow me to draw broader conclusions about his Anglo-Irish reception and the intellectual culture in which he was received.

Dónal Gill is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Concordia University and Political Science lecturer at Dawson College. Both institutions are located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research looks Irish and British political thought in the eighteenth century, particularly Swift and Burke. He will be speaking about his research at the ECIS Annual Conference on 8-9 June 2016. 

Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
The imagination of Jonathan Swift

Best book of 18th century interest:
Political ideas in eighteenth-century Ireland, edited by S J Connolly

What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
I wouldn’t mind picking the brain of Francis Hutcheson over a glass of warm milk.

What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference?
I will be presenting on the topic of the pitfalls of travel engaged in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The paper places Swift in dialogue with Locke and Shaftesbury on advising travellers how to obtain the benefits of travels whilst avoiding the myriad possibilities for corruption and degeneration unleashed by voyaging into the unknown. The Travels commentary on such issues is an interesting push back against the modern liberal assumptions regarding the universal benefit of travel to all people in all circumstances. Instead, I read Swift as suggesting that there is a slim likelihood of the emergence of individuals who are sufficiently and properly educated so as to render the benefit of travel to be available to them, and are corrupted by their experiences as a result.

Ciara Conway is a second year PhD candidate in music at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on the Irish playwright John O’Keeffe and his career in music-theatre in London at the end of the eighteenth century. She will be speaking about her work at the ECIS Annual Conference on 8-9 June 2018. 

Favourite archive:
The British Library, London

Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
The London and Dublin theatres, assisting on new plays and rehearsing new music. Nothing would excite me more than being part of the production team alongside directors Thomas Sheridan, John Rich, or Thomas Harris.

Best online resource:
ECCO or British Newspapers 1600-1900. Archive.org also has some hidden musical gems.

Best book of 18th century interest:
Roger Fiske’s English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
This is subject to change, but at the moment I would like to chat with the Italian soprano Giovanna Sestini (1750-1814). Having a career that encompassed theatres in Florence, Lisbon, London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, she no doubt has some insider information that would ruffle some feathers.

What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2016?
My ECIS paper will focus on the dramatic role music plays in O’Keeffe and Shield’s Irish based comic operas The Poor Soldier (1783) and The Wicklow Mountains (1796). Passing comments tend to reason that the music was incidental, contributing little or nothing to the work’s dramatic action. My paper will argue quite the contrary.

Kristina Decker is a PhD student at University College Cork. Her research looks at Mary Delany and the female experience in eighteenth-century Ireland and she will be speaking about her work at the ECIS Annual Conference on 8-9 June 2017. You can find out more about Kristina by following her on twitter.

Favourite archive:
My favourite archive would have to be the British Library. I spent a lot of time there while I was completing a MA in Eighteenth Century Studies at King’s College London. It is a fantastic place to work and the sheer expanse of their collection is amazing. Whenever I’m in London I always plan a visit.

Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
It’s so hard to choose! I’ve spent so many hours wandering through the British Museum. I love the Enlightenment Gallery – they even have some of Mary Delany’s original ‘paper mosaiks’ on display there! But another favourite would be the John Soane museum. I first visited it when I was a young teenager and his rather eccentric house and collection really captivated my imagination!

Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
These questions are so hard! Even though my current research focuses on Ireland, I would have to say London throughout the eighteenth-century – it was buzzing! I’d give anything to walk down the Strand during the eighteenth century.

Best online resource:
It would have to be ECCO. It’s an incredible resource. I can spend hours on there – I have to be careful not to get lost in it!

Best book of 18th century interest:
It’s a tie. I first encountered Amanda Vickery’s The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England during my master’s degree and they massively influenced the direction of my own research.

What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
I have to say Mary Delany! Is it possible to have a drink with her at different times of her life? I want to meet the young vivacious widow Mary Pendarves, the Mary Delany of Delville, and Mrs Delany the widowed artist. After reading her letters, I feel like I know her already. I hope that I’d measure up to her ideas of decorum and propriety and wouldn’t feature as a negative postscript in one of her letters!

What’s so great about the eighteenth century?
I don’t know where to begin! The eighteenth century was so vibrant! There’s the amazing architecture and literature. There’s the enlightenment, the birth of the novel as a literary genre, the industrial revolution, the American and French Revolutions… there was so much going on! What’s not great!? Ok… apart from poverty and disease.

What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference?
I am currently in the first year of my PhD at University College Cork. My research focuses on Mary Delany’s letters from the period that she spent in Ireland. I am particularly interested in elements relating to decorum, propriety, the home (especially gendered space), and sociability.

The paper that I will be presenting at the 2017 ECIS focuses on Mary Delany’s first trip to Ireland in 1731. Mary Delany (then Mary Pendarves) liked Ireland so much that she extended her visit from six months to eighteen months. In her letters, Mary Pendarves describes Ireland with a fresh and very detailed eye. Using these letters as a window into her experience, my paper investigates Mary’s first encounters with Ireland. Her first impressions of the country, which, apart from the odd bad dancer, were generally very positive! My paper will discuss her experience of Ireland as a female member of the elite and how she perceived Ascendancy Ireland – as a place she could easily negotiate.