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Professor Sean O'Connell
School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and PoliticsProfessor O’Connell works on the social history of modern Britain and Ireland (particularly Belfast). He has been active in developing oral history at Queen’s and is an editor of Oral History. Research interests include working-class communities, gender, and consumption. His is currently working on two projects: a history of ‘joyriding’, for publication by Palgrave Pivot and an oral history of Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland. The latter has been commissioned by the Department of Health.
O’Connell has published four monographs to date: The car in British society: class, gender and motoring 1896-1939 (Manchester University Press, 1998); Mail order retailing in Britain: a business and social history, (OUP, 2005: with D. Porter and R. Coopey); Credit and community: working-class debt in the UK since 1880 (OUP, 2009); The politics of consumer credit in the UK, 1938-1992 (OUP, 2008: with S.Aveyard and P. Corthorn)
Research Interests
Open to PhD applications in the field of
- Oral history
- Working class community (including deindustrialisation)
- Gender history
- Social history of Belfast since Partition
Public outreach & key achievements
- Founder of Quote Hub (collective of Queen’s based oral historians) with a remit for public outreach and engagement. For me see - https://quote.qub.ac.uk/
- Involved in a variety of public history partnerships. These include membership of academic
advisory panels that revamped the Ulster Museum’s History Gallery and its Troubles Gallery.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkEn9CkfMfo
Research students
| PhD Title | Queer Belfast |
| PhD Title | Ethnic minority communities in twentieth century Belfast |
| PhD Title | Memory, conflict and class: the experience and legacy of deindustrialisation in Belfast and North East England |