The Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Annual Conference 2026 will take place in Queen’s University Belfast on the 11-12th June.
Below you will find the full conference programme, as well as registration guidelines and links to Eventbrite where you can register your attendance for one or both days, and for the conference dinner.
We look forward to seeing you in June!
Registration
Conference registration must be carried out via Eventbrite.
The deadline for registration is June 3rd 2026.
Prices are as follows:
Full rate: €30 per day (€60 for full conference)
Concessionary rate (Delegates who are students, unwaged, low wages or retired): €17.50 per day.
Conference dinner: €45 (main, dessert, & glass of wine/beer).
The dinner menu can be found here.
Please note, registration for the conference dinner must be carried out by May 22nd.
Please register through our Eventbrite here.
Programme:
The full conference programme can be found below, but is also available to download as a PDF or Word document.
Abstracts for the speakers’ papers can be found here.
Thursday 11th June
10.45: Registration (PFC Foyer) Tea / Coffee
11.15-11.55 Welcome & Plenary Roundtable
(PFC 2.18)
Africans in Ireland, 1578-1921: Documenting their Historic Presence, A Work in Progress
A panel discussion of Dr Bill Hart’s critical, decades-long archival work and the transition into a digital humanities project.
In person: William Hart (UU) and Nik Ribianszky (QUB)
On-line: Mark Doyle (Middle Tennessee State) and Jonathan Wright (Maynooth)
12.00-13.30 Parallel Sessions I
1a: Women’s writing (Chair: Sinéad Sturgeon, QUB)
(PFC 2.13)
Sylvie Kleinman (TCD): ‘“I awoke crying in ecstasy: ‘I’m in Belfast!” Political exile, public fame, private affective spheres. Relocating Matilda Tone in context (ca 1785-1849)’
Sonja Lawrenson (Manchester Met): ‘“Incapable of Translation:” Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent as Transfiction’
Amy Prendergast (TCD): ‘Climate, race, and mental health in the memoirs of Elizabeth Digby Pilot (1742–1826)’
1b Army connections (Chair: S.J. Connolly, QUB)
(PFC 2.11)
Conor Caldwell (UL): Tunes: military and traditional Irish (tbc)
James K. Wright (Carleton): ‘The Evatt Collection: The Irish Rebellion of 1798 and Music of the Irish Gothic’
Charles Ivar McGrath (UCD): ‘Soldiers on the move in Ireland and abroad, 1691-1815’
13.30–14.15 Lunch (PFC Foyer)
14.15-15.45 Parallel Sessions 2
2a 1790s (Chair: Peter Gray, QUB)
(PFC 2.13)
Helen Dallas (Galway): ‘Theatre in Revolutionary Contexts: two Earl of Essex plays in London and Dublin’
Maria Zukovs (St Andrews): ‘“The present alarmed state of the Country”: News, Government Correspondence and the 1796 French Invasion of Ireland’
Lucy Cogan (UCD): ‘Good British Ale or Bad Irish Whiskey: Ulster Labouring Class Poets and the 1798 Rebellion’
2b Economics, hierarchies and education (Chair: Margaret Kelleher, UCD)
(PFC 2.11)
Andrea Katrina Byrne (Maynooth): ‘Novelising Servitude: Discourses and Depictions of Domestic Servants in Eighteenth Century Literature’
Jessica White (UCC): ‘Economies of Intimacy in Maria Edgeworth’s Juvenile Fiction’
Siobhán Dowling Long (UCC): ‘The Early Charity-School Movement in Ireland: Qualifications, Rules and Orders to be Observed by Charity-School Masters (1716–1730)’
15.45-16.15 Tea / Coffee
16.15-17.45 Parallel Sessions 3
3a Ireland and Scotland (Chair: Frank Ferguson, UU)
(PFC 2.13)
Scott Macfie (Glasgow): ‘Sweetening the Soil: Liming in the Irish and Scottish Agricultural Revolutions, 1750-1815’
Gillian Dooley (Flinders): Jane Austen, “Scotch airs” and “Irish melodies”’
Alan Millar (UU): ‘Rev. James Glass A.M.: The Mercury’s Mercurial Makar’
3b Religion (Chair:Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, DCU)
(PFC 2.11)
Andrew Sneddon (UU): ‘Prophecy, “Toleration” and Missioning: The “French Prophets” in early eighteenth-century Ireland’
Robert O’Byrne (TCD): ‘Horticultural Hierarchy: Eighteenth Century Church of Ireland Bishops and their Gardens’
Moyra Haslett (QUB): ‘Dissenting connections: Olivia Elder and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Antrim and Warrington’
18.00-19.00
Plenary (Chair: Patrick Walsh, TCD)
(PFC 2.18)
Leonie Hannan (QUB): ‘The Labour of Home: Cultivating, sustaining and experimenting in the eighteenth century’
19.15-20.00: Wine reception in the Seamus Heaney Centre
Sponsored by the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen’s
PGR Bursary announcement
20.00 Conference Dinner
Holohan’s Pantry
Friday 12th June
09.00 Friday Registration Desk opens (PFC Foyer)
09.30-11.00: Parallel Sessions 4
4a Gulliver’s Travels (Chair: Aileen Douglas, TCD)
(PFC 2.13)
Brendan Twomey (TCD): ‘“which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man’s conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine”: Religion in Gulliver’s Travels’
Declan Kavanagh (Kent): ‘A Book-Loving Yahoo: Michael Clancy’s Memoirs (1750)’
James Ward (UU): ‘“Trussed up like Gulliver”: Racial dystopia in the wake of the Travels’
4b Greann, striapachas agus cráifeacht: Éagsúlacht ábhair i litríocht na Gaeilge ón 18ú hAois (Cathaoirleach: Mícheál O Mainnin, QUB)
(PFC 2.11)
Sophie Ní Riain (UCC): ‘Eachtra Ghrinn ón 18ú haois’
Keith Ó Riain (MIC): ‘Beirt Fhilí agus Striapach Ché Chorcaí’
Ciarán Mac Murchaidh (DCU): ‘“In an easy and familiar stile”: Téacsanna cráifeacha á n-aistriú go Gaeilge in Éirinn san ochtú haois déag – cui bono?’
11.00-11.30 Tea / Coffee
11.30-12.30 Léacht Alan Harrison – Alan Harrison Lecture (Chair: Conor Caldwell, UL)
(PFC 2.18)
Nicholas Carolan (ITMA): ‘The Country Dance in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Music and Moves’: an illustrated talk.
12.30-13.00 Lunch (PFC foyer)
13.00-14.00: ECIS AGM
(PFC 2.13)
Delegates not attending the AGM are invited to attend an additional session on the ‘Africans in Ireland’ online database, during which they can trial work-in-progress. Please indicate if you wish to attend at the Friday registration.
14.00-15.30 Parallel Sessions 5
5a Re-visiting Irish authors (Chair: Sonja Lawrenson, Manchester Met)
(PFC 2.13)
Richard K. Maher (Rathmines): ‘The Wogan-Swift Correspondence: a new perspective’
Sean Moore (TCD): ‘‘‘Bagging Groceries” with Mrs. Anastasia Raffarty in Maria Edgeworth’s The Absentee: How to be Nouveaux-Riches through the Secret Service Money Used to Pass the Act of Union of 1800’
David Clare (MIC)
‘C.S. Lewis and Eighteenth-Century Irish Literature’
5b. Ireland and abroad (Chair: David Hayton, QUB) (PFC 2.11)
James Orchin (QUB), ‘“A very pretty rascal”: Ireland, America, and the making of a conservative Whig’
Conor Lucey (UCD), ‘An Irish context for George Washington’s “New Room” at Mount Vernon’
Daniel Sanjiv Roberts (QUB): ‘“Theatre of many a bloody spectacle”: Nabobery, Electioneering, and Spatial Politics in The Orientalist (1820)’
15.30-16.00 Tea/ Coffee
16.00-17.00
Plenary (PFC 2.18) (Chair: Clíona Ó Gallchoir, UCC)
Claire Connolly (UCC): ‘Hermits on the Holyhead Road: Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby’.
Conference Close
Delegates are invited to join the organisers for an informal drink in the Irish Studies seminar room, first floor, 27 University Square.
The Society would like to thank Marsh’s Library for their continuing generous sponsorship of Postgraduate bursaries and to the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies (QUB), the Institute of Irish Studies (QUB) and the School of Arts, English and Languages (QUB) for financial support of the conference.