What do we mean by modern Ireland? Where is modern Ireland and when did it begin? Having broached these questions, this course will investigate what life was like on the island of Ireland across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

Reflecting the increased focus on social and cultural themes in Irish historiography, this course addresses the ways in which historians tackle a range of societal questions. What characterised peoples’ family, working, and social lives? How did people interact with state and religious bodies? How did the evolution of media affect daily life? What forces and ideas shaped the provision of education and welfare? What impact did emigration have on host and home societies?

 

Key to the course is an understanding of what differentiated experiences; how did gender, class, geography and moral/status hierarchies of different kinds shape individual lives? It will also place the social history of Ireland in comparative and global contexts, in order to question ideas of Irish insularity and exceptionalism.