I’m a social and gender historian of nineteenth-century Ireland. My research interests lie in the Irish middle-class family, particularly the often-overlooked sibling and cousin relationship. I use these family relationships to explore sociability, reputation, and the gendered expectations of middle-class society. I am especially interested in the role of the family in shaping Irish middle-class identity during the nineteenth century. My doctoral research used family papers, wills and testamentary material, and genealogical records to explore the role of kin in a range of thematic areas including courtship and marriage, household formation, inheritance, philanthropy, the family business, schooling, social networking, and migration.
Keywords
{history of the family}; {siblings}; {Ulster}; {middle classes}; {genealogy}; {nineteenth-century Ireland}; {courtship}; {family relationships}; {middle-class identity}; {women’s history}; {gender history};
Shannon Devlin, ‘The governess in nineteenth-century Ulster middle-class households’ in Women’s History Review, 31, no. 5 (2022), pp 826-47: doi.
Shannon Devlin, ‘”Glad to the heart to see any of my brothers”: exploring Irish family life through sibling relationships’ in History of the Family, (2023, ahead of print), pp 1-24 https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2023.2300644
