I am a recent awardee of an Irish Research Council Award, working at Dublin City University. My research project (2021-2023) is entitled ‘Mapping the Miasma’: Ireland’s nineteenth century pandemic‘. It is an analytical mapping of the course and geographic spread of the 1832 cholera epidemic in provincial Ireland.
My main area of interest is in urban morphology, the development of the urban form and the conceptual framework of town plan analysis. I am interested in the study of topography as a shaper of urban form, continuity and change in urban areas and the creation of spatial form through social and economic process. I was awarded my PhD in Maynooth in 2016, from thesis which examined the origins of poor housing in Sligo and other 19th century provincial Irish towns, and the social and political efforts made to improve this situation. My current area of research is on the Irish Cholera epidemic of 1832, its impact on Irish towns and society, and the consequences for the nascent health system of pre-famine Ireland.
Areas of expertise
Urban Studies & History
Sligo
Cholera Epidemic 1832
18th and 19th centuries
Irish provincial town studies
Social conditions
Life of William Bourke Cockran (1854-1923)
PhD, Maynooth University, 2016.
Thesis Title: ‘Rehousing the urban poor in Irish Country towns, 1880-1947: A case study of Sligo’.
Supervisor, Dr. Jacinta Prunty.
Employment
Senior Tutor, Maynooth University, 2016-2017, and 2017-2018. I tutored on the First Year Modules, HY121, ‘Vikings and Normans’, and on HY122, ‘The Making of the modern World’. This work include the marking of assignments and delivery of module each week.
In July 2016, I designed and delivered a Summer School History Module in Maynooth University. This week-long course was part of the BA module in Local and Community Studies, CM7. The course, worth 5 credits in the BA module, was examined by a stand-alone project on a selected town, and associated class tests, which I then evaluated.
|n June 2016, I delivered part of the elective module in Historic Town mapping to post-grad students at Maynooth University.
Outreach activities
EXHIBITION
‘Champion of Liberty: William Bourke Cockran, Sligoman, US Congressman, International Statesman, and Churchill’s mentor’. Sligo Town Hall, May 5th to 25th 2016. This was a major exhibition involving much original research and writing. I co-ordinated the historical aspect of the exhibition, including the design and presentation of the various exhibition panels. This was a challenging project, which involved co-ordinating a voluntary committee and meeting a very tight deadline.
PUBLIC LECTURES
‘Sligo is a Furnace – The Town has become a place of the Dead’, An examination of the Cholera epidemic in Sligo town in the summer of 1832′. Sligo, November 2018, as part of the Bram Stoker Society Conference on Sligo’s influence on the author of ‘Dracula’.
October 2018, ‘Mercantile Sligo: The impact of expanding trade and manufacturing on the development of the 19th century town’. Delivered at the Sligo Field Club Annual Conference,” Sligo: The making of a 19th century Provincial Town: Examining how national political and social events, impacted on the urban fabric of 19th century Sligo”.
April 2018, Sligo Field Club Lecture, “W. Bourke Cockran – ‘The Champion of Liberty’: Irish by birth, Continental by Education, and American by Choice”.
‘Sligo’s urban origins and growth since 1242’, August 2016. Keynote talk, as invited lecturer, given as part of Sligo Co. Council’s programme for Heritage Week.
‘Sligo Workhouse and its digitized records’. August 2016. Lecture at Sligo Library, during Heritage Week. The lecture focused on the Sligo Union workhouse, and the Poor Law system. The talk was part of a formal launch of the digitized on-line publication of the Workhouse Registers from 1847.
Speaker at Royal Irish Academy – Irish Historic Towns Atlas symposium, Limerick. ‘Learning from the past: mapping our future’, October 2014. My paper was entitled, ‘Sligo’s early urban development: a western Anglo-Norman outpost’. This symposium was in collaboration with the Hunt Museum, and included lectures from authors of other IHTA Town Atlases.
• Address to Sligo Corporation on the occasion of its Dissolution, May 2014. I was invited by the Mayor of Sligo to formally address the last meeting of Sligo Borough Council, on the day of its dissolution, after 400 years as a chartered Corporation town. The address focused on a synopsis of the town’s history and development since its foundation in 1242.
• Sligo Field Club Annual Conference, May 2012, Keynote Speaker. ‘Mapping Sligo’s Urban Development 1242-2012’.
• ‘Forthill and Sligo, Seven Centuries of a Garrison Town’, Summer 2009. This was an adult education group involved in the ‘Legacy of Belief’ cross-border project, under the auspices of Sligo Co. Council. The purpose of the ‘Legacy of Belief’ programme was to explore the impact of Anglo-Irish heritage, partition and the Northern Ireland conflict on Sligo.
• ‘Urban Evolution, The Streets of Sligo’, to the Sligo Field Club, November 2007. Detailed key-note lecture on new findings regarding the origin and growth of the street pattern of Sligo. Focus on intact medieval pattern, and new theory on an early market place. Lecture was given in advance of publication of my book, ‘The Streets of Sligo’.
Committees & Associations
Member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians
Member of Sligo Field Club
Member of the Sligo Neolithic Landscapes Archaeology PPN group Sligo.
Founder Member of the Sligo Stoker Society
Founder member of Sligo Bourke Cockran Society
Awards
2021 Irish Research Council Awardee – ‘Mapping the Miasma’: Mapping Ireland’s nineteenth century pandemic. Analysing the 1832 Cholera epidemic in provincial Ireland
2021 – Grant from the Heritage Council to conduct a joint analytical survey of Sligo’s Cholera Burial ground, along with Dr James Bonsall. This involved analysis the results of forensic, non-invasive ERI survey of the mostly intact cholera burial ground at Sligo Hospital
2021 – Sligo Co Council Community and Voluntary Grant, (with Dr Robert Hensey) ‘Sligo Abbey – A scoping survey to investigate the extent and nature of cholera burials during the 1832 epidemic’.
2021 – A Heritage Council, Grant, in conduction with Dr Stefan Berg, Dr Robert Hensey, and Padraig Meehan, as part of the Sligo Neolithic Landscape group, entitled, ‘A Baseline Survey of the Neolithic Passage Tombs of County Sligo. This was a survey as part of an application the Tentative World Heritage Site list
Other activities
CONFERENCE AND SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS
‘Sligo’s Cholera epidemic experience – the town has become a place of the dead’. Presented to the Irish Medical Humanities Network (December 2019)
“Sligo is a Furnace – The Town has become a place of the Dead”, An examination of the Cholera epidemic in Sligo town in the summer of 1832′. Sligo, November 2018, as part of the Sligo Bram Stoker Society Annual Conference.
October 2018, ‘Mercantile Sligo: The impact of expanding trade and manufacturing on the development of the 19th century town’. Delivered at the Sligo Field Club Annual Conference,” Sligo: The making of a 19th century Provincial Town: Examining how national political and social events, impacted on the urban fabric of 19th century Sligo”.
‘Sligo’s early urban development: a western Anglo-Norman outpost’. Paper delivered at Royal Irish Academy – Irish Historic Towns Atlas symposium, Limerick. ‘Learning from the past: mapping our future’, October 2014.
‘Mapping Sligo’s Urban Development 1242-2012’. Paper presented at the Sligo Field Club Annual Conference, May 2012, (Keynote Speaker.) Conference to mark the 400th anniversary of the granting of a charter to Sligo town.
Publications
Books
‘Sligo -an historic urban centre on the Atlantic coast’, A heritage guide insert for Archeology Ireland (Dublin, 2019)
The Streets of Sligo: Urban Evolution over the course of Seven Centuries. (Sligo, 2008)
Irish Historic Towns Atlas, No. 17,Sligo, Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, 2012) (with Marie Louise Legge)
Cartographic editor for ‘People, Places and Pilgrimage- The Diocese of Elphin’, Beirne, F. (Ed.) (Dublin 2000) (Columba Press, illus., 440pp).
Book Chapters
Chapter in Birth and The Irish – A Miscellany, (ed) Salvador Ryan, ‘TheUrbanInfant MortalityPenalty: Lessons fromSligo —1920–1947′. (Dublin 2021)
Peer Reviewed Journals
Review of ‘Building the Irish Courthouse and prison: a political history, 1750-1850‘, by Richard J. Butler, in Irish Studies Review, Vo. 29, Issue 2. (2021)
Other Journals
‘Robert Young’s Map of Sligo in 1861, – an assessment of Sligo’s Victorian gas network’ (with Martin A. Timoney), in Sligo Field Club Journal, (2016) vol. i, pp xx-xx.
