Olwen Purdue – författare

Through a collection of essays that reflect the complexity of the island’s historical past as it operates today, Public History in Ireland delivers a scholarly yet accessible introduction to contemporary topics and debates in Irish public history.Despite the reputation that Ireland, both north and south, has gained as a place of contestation, this is the first book-length study to tackle its diverse and often ‘difficult’ public histories. Public History in Ireland offers examples drawn not only from museums, heritage and collections, prime mediators of public historical interpretation, but also from the work of artists and academics. It considers the silences in Ireland’s history-telling, including those of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland and of the traumatic public discoveries and re-evaluations of the island’s institutions of social control. The book’s key message is that history is active, making itself felt in ongoing debates about heritage, identity, nationhood, post-conflict society and reparative justice. It shows that Irish public history is freighted and often fraught with jeopardy, but as such it is rich with insight that has relevance far beyond this island’s shores.This book is useful for students, scholars and practitioners working in the fields of public history and the history of Ireland.

Through a collection of essays that reflect the complexity of the island’s historical past as it operates today, Public History in Ireland delivers a scholarly yet accessible introduction to contemporary topics and debates in Irish public history.Despite the reputation that Ireland, both north and south, has gained as a place of contestation, this is the first book-length study to tackle its diverse and often ‘difficult’ public histories. Public History in Ireland offers examples drawn not only from museums, heritage and collections, prime mediators of public historical interpretation, but also from the work of artists and academics. It considers the silences in Ireland’s history-telling, including those of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland and of the traumatic public discoveries and re-evaluations of the island’s institutions of social control. The book’s key message is that history is active, making itself felt in ongoing debates about heritage, identity, nationhood, post-conflict society and reparative justice. It shows that Irish public history is freighted and often fraught with jeopardy, but as such it is rich with insight that has relevance far beyond this island’s shores.This book is useful for students, scholars and practitioners working in the fields of public history and the history of Ireland.

Urban spaces in nineteenth-century Ireland is a wide-ranging and innovative collection of essays, which offers new insights on the Irish urban experience. Adopting a spatial approach, the essays presented in this collection move beyond study of events that happened and people who lived in the towns and cities of nineteenth-century Ireland, instead exploring the ways in which particular urban spaces were constructed and experienced. Focusing on a range of urban spaces, from individual streets and districts, to schools, asylums and entire cities, they highlight both the multifaceted nature of the Irish urban experience and the potential of the spatial approach to the study of history.

The late nineteenth-century city acted as a magnet for the poor of ruralIreland, attracting them with the promise of employment and economicindependence. For many, however, urban life meant economic precarity,marginalisation and destitution, with the workhouse as an all-too-presentreality. Young families were particularly vulnerable, with the result that thousandsof children found themselves confined within the workhouse walls.This book explores the changing role of the Irish poor law in childwelfare in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century city. Taking as itsfocus Belfast, a burgeoning industrial and port city at the heart of a globaltrade network and a city deeply divided along political and confessional lines,it examines the ways in which that city’s poorest children and their families engagedwith the poor law and used the workhouse as part of their economy ofmakeshifts. It examines the various spaces of the poor law – whether theworkhouse, the foster home, or the far reaches of empire – as sites of encounterand engagement between welfare authorities and the city’s poorest families, andexplores the development of child welfare practice at a time of increasingstate encroachment into the daily lives of poor children.

Urban Spaces in Nineteenth-Century Ireland is a wide-ranging and innovative collection of essays, which offers new insights on the Irish urban experience. Adopting a spatial approach, the essays presented in this collection move beyond study of events that happened and people who lived in the towns and cities of nineteenth-century Ireland, instead exploring the ways in which particular urban spaces were constructed and experienced. Focusing on a range of urban spaces, from individual streets and districts, to schools, asylums and entire cities, they highlight both the multifaceted nature of the Irish urban experience and the potential of the spatial approach to the study of history. List of contributors: Olwen Purdue, Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, Laura Johnstone, Matthew Potter, Jonathan Jeffrey Wright, Mary Hatfield, Olwen Purdue, Gillian Allmond, Georgina Laragy, Mary Jane Boland and Oliver Betts.

The late nineteenth-century city acted as a magnet for the poor of ruralIreland, attracting them with the promise of employment and economicindependence. For many, however, urban life meant economic precarity,marginalisation and destitution, with the workhouse as an all-too-presentreality. Young families were particularly vulnerable, with the result that thousandsof children found themselves confined within the workhouse walls.This book explores the changing role of the Irish poor law in childwelfare in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century city. Taking as itsfocus Belfast, a burgeoning industrial and port city at the heart of a globaltrade network and a city deeply divided along political and confessional lines,it examines the ways in which that city’s poorest children and their families engagedwith the poor law and used the workhouse as part of their economy ofmakeshifts. It examines the various spaces of the poor law – whether theworkhouse, the foster home, or the far reaches of empire – as sites of encounterand engagement between welfare authorities and the city’s poorest families, andexplores the development of child welfare practice at a time of increasingstate encroachment into the daily lives of poor children.

"The Big House in the North of Ireland" explores the changing fortunes of the landed elite in the six counties that became Northern Ireland from the land war of the late 1870s to the last days of the Unionist government at Stormont in the 1960s. Purdue examines the social, economic and political challenges faced by the north's landed elite - tenant agitation, the break-up of their estates and the growing political challenge initially from Belfast's mercantile class and, eventually, from populist political movements - and determines the extent to which these undermined the foundations of their influence. She discusses the strategies adopted by the north's landed class to meet the challenges it faced and uncovers the reasons for the Big House clinging on as a social and political force in Northern Ireland long after it had ceased to hold any value in the rest of the island.