Steven is currently a first year PhD candidate at Queen’s University Belfast.

Egan received his B.A. in History and Politics from Queen’s University Belfast in 2016 and completed his M.A. in History at Queen’s in September 2017. During his undergraduate studies, he won a place on the inaugural QUB-Vanderbilt University ‘Maymester’ class (2015) and was also awarded the Julie-Ann Statham prize for academic achievement (2016).

His PhD thesis, which is supervised by Marie Coleman and Margaret O’Callaghan, is entitled ‘The Partition of Ireland in the transnational perspective of the Commonwealth,’ and aims to contribute to the fields of Commonwealth, diasporic and transnational history. Through applying the transnational lens to the partition of Ireland, his research hopes to reveal greater insights into how the dominions of the British Commonwealth interacted with the partition of Ireland, and how the presence of significant Irish diasporic communities within Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa impacted local politics and the dominion’s responses towards partition as a political solution on the island of Ireland.

More broadly, Egan’s research interests broadly cover twentieth-century Irish history, especially in the periods 1910-25 and 1957-73. Continuing from his studies in politics at undergraduate, Egan remains keenly interested in contemporary British, Irish and European politics, with a peculiar interest in International Relations. In 2017, Egan was awarded a ‘highly commended’ distinction from the prestigious Undergraduate Awards for an essay examining the importance of the bilateral Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

I completed a BA (Joint Hons.) in English and History at QUB in 2014, and undertook a Masters in History (American Strand), from which I graduated in 2015. I have a keen interest in American history, particularly nineteenth-century African American history. Between completing my MA and starting the PhD in History, I lived in Boston and worked at the Old State House, where I gained invaluable experience in public history.

My current research is on how the politics of African Americans, particularly freed slaves, developed in contraband camps during the American Civil War. It focuses on the revolution of political activism among African Americans between the crisis of the late antebellum period and the tumultuous upheaval brought on by war. A detailed exploration of the development of "the slaves’ politics" before and during wartime is essential to understanding the transformed national political landscape of the post-emancipation United States, registered most clearly in the anomalous and remarkable mobilization of former slaves during Reconstruction. The contraband camps played an important and unique function in forging this new grassroots politics, drawing together a largely illiterate and geographically diverse slave population to discuss the issues of the day at a moment when their own fate was bound up with the outcome of war. My research will explore how the political activism of freed slaves came to the fore during the war, and will aim to uncover the monumental impact this assertiveness had on the fate of slavery and the future of the United States as a whole.

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My current project will examine Dublin's response to the 'Troubles', with particular emphasis on its security activities. I will build upon my MA dissertation, which focused on similar lines of research, to track shifts in the Republic of Ireland's policy over the period in question in order to critically re-assess Dublin's approach to tackling the Provisional Irish Republican Army, showing how it was shaped by both British initiatives, and key developments in Northern Ireland. Moreover, this research will pay particular attention to how Irish public opinion, itself affected by British actions, conditioned the security efforts of the administration in the South, thereby contributing to our understanding of how counterinsurgency interacts with, and is influenced by, political opinion. 

Prior to starting at Queen's University, I studied at the University of Sheffield for four years, undertaking a BA in History and MA in Modern History. 

Emma completed a BTECH Diploma in Foundation Art and Design in 2009, before graduating with a BA in Modern History from Queen's University in 2012. In her second year at Queen's she spent an Erasmus semester aboard studying Modern History and 20th Century Art History in the University of Amsterdam. Following graduation she lived and worked in Lanzarote, Spain for a year before coming home to study an MA in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Ulster University. Whilst studying for her MA, and for some time afterwards, Emma managed an e-commerce website which specialised in selling tickets for tourist attractions, museums and heritage sites.

Emma's Ph.D research is multidisciplinary, within the School of History at Queen's, investigating the impact of perceived provenance, space and appropriated ritual responses on the understanding of sacred objects. To conduct the research she will be drawing from a range of disciplines relating to spatial theory, architectural theory, performance and ritual theory, cultural studies, museum display and art theory. Reviewing literature from this range of disciplines will attempt to draw conclusions that are of importance to the central concerns of this research located at the interactions between material cultural studies, heritage and public history. 

I am a PhD student, studying Medieval History. I studied my undergraduate degree at Queen’s where I first developed a keen interest in Medieval History. Following this I studied a Masters in Medieval History, also at Queen’s. My PhD analyses the relationships between friars and townspeople in Dublin between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries to show how the former expanded out of Dublin and moved to different Irish towns.

Friars were members of one of the mendicant orders founded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were not attached to any particular parish, and indeed had no visible means of support. They rejected the monastic ideal of seclusion, and went to live among townspeople and survived by begging. They were bound by a vow of absolute poverty and lived as Christ did. Their survival was dependent on the goodwill of their listeners. It was this way of life that gave them their name ‘mendicant’, derived from the Latin mendicare, meaning ‘to beg’. The main aim of friars was to spread God’s word in urban areas. They were active in community life, teaching, healing and helping the sick, poor and destitute.

My PhD considers the degree to which friars were integrated into towns. Were they popular with the townspeople, and did this change over the course of the late medieval period? Many primary sources, such as wills and property records convey the financial interactions between the friars and the townspeople. Why did towns and their residents donate money, land or gifts to the friars? Did individuals expect friars to save their soul or to preach and teach the Gospels to others? It is also important to understand why townsmen preferred to make financial donations to the friars instead of other monastic institutions or religious fraternities and the tensions this created.

As friars were outside the traditional makeup of towns, my research explores how they were considered by the urban authorities. In particular this thesis examines ideas of space and identity to develop and challenge the current scholarship on the establishment of friars in towns and the socio-economic relationship between the religious orders and urban inhabitants. The use of spatial methodology is an innovative and focal point of this thesis, and by analysing the location of friaries and how friars used the space in these towns, my thesis will show how friars used towns in order to spread their message and attempt to gain supporters. By analysing how friars moved out of Dublin to surrounding towns, my PhD will show how the use of space assisted in friar-town relations and the friars’ development in Ireland across three centuries.

Biography  

After studying fashion design at Manchester School of Art, I attended Queen’s University Belfast, taking a BA in Modern History. Following this, I completed an MA in Irish History, with a dissertation entitled ‘No authority to have it in her possession: women and consumer crime in Ireland, 1890-1914’. Following my MA I worked in the Parliamentary Archives at the Houses of Parliament, Westminster. In this role, I curated online and physical exhibitions on the Easter Rising, state visits, Shakespeare 400 and the Battle of the Somme. I was also a volunteer archives assistant on the Vote 100 project in parliament to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918. I have been commissioned by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to write on women parliamentary candidates in early twentieth-century Ireland. Additionally, I have completed archival work for the National Gallery Archive, PRONI, Special Collections and Archives at Queen’s University Belfast, the Feminist Library, and the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers.  I then qualified as an archivist by completing an MA in Archives and Records Management at the University of Liverpool.  My dissertation was entitled ‘Irish national archives 1922-1949: a comparative study of the Public Record Office of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’. I maintain an active interest in exhibition curation and Irish and British record-keeping history and practice. 

Research Abstract

The historical and political treatment previously accorded to the religious dimension of ‘the Troubles’ has been an area of deep contention and much debate, with charges that traditional historical narratives tend to focus on the contribution of male clergy and the voices of women Religious are rarely heard. Consequently, this project aims to make a significant intervention into research on marginalised identities during conflict, through analysis of the experiences and roles played by Catholic religious sisters during ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland (1968-2008). Building on previous research undertaken for my Master of Research in the Arts, this project will combine academic data and archival research with oral testimony. It aims to place women’s voices at the centre of research, exploring what their narratives reveal about their experiences as religious Sisters, their socio-historical situation, and the cultural and political climate in which they lived and worked.

The positive engagement of many Catholic religious sisters in the development of this research will reveal the potential advantages offered by the collaborative story telling process, expose the difficulties faced by women during the ‘Troubles’, and demonstrate that the voices of all who endure conflict deserve to be heard.  

Particular areas of interest: The 1960s - global conflict and civil unrest; the Catholic Church of the post-Vatican II era; theologies of liberation; the transnational religious activity of religious sisters in response to conflict; religious sisters - identity, ‘informal power’ and ‘conform or rebel’.

Biographical details: I worked as a nurse in specialised areas of health care for twenty one years. I received a BA in the Humanities (First class honours) from Ulster University in 2012 and a Master of Research in the Arts (with Distinction) from Ulster University in 2016. I commenced my PhD in History in Queen’s University Belfast in September 2017.

My PhD research project is generously funded by the Department for the Environment (DfE).

Publications: Briege Rafferty and Dianne Kirby, ‘Sisters in the ‘Troubles’, Doctrine and Life, vol. 67, no. 1, (January, 2017), pp. 2-12.

Originally from Denver, Colorado, I received my Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and German from Hillsdale College (a small liberal arts school in southwest Michigan) in 2014. I then completed my Master of Arts in History at QUB in 2015 during which time I studied the Parliamentary fast sermons of the second English civil war.

I have now undertaken a PhD studentship as part of a four-year European Research Council-funded project: ‘War and the Supernatural in Early Modern Europe.’ My dissertation is entitled ‘The reception of Calvinist resistance theory in early seventeenth-century Scotland and England’ and investigates how conversations regarding resistance to authority held amongst continental scholars in the French and German-speaking lands were received by scholars in Scottish and English universities between 1603 and 1640. This thesis relies on previously under-examined Latin-language texts and academic correspondence to illustrate the transnational influence of continental religious and political thought on British intellectual life preceding the civil wars of the 1640s.

Although these represent my primary research interests, I am currently involved in organising conferences on a wide range of topics. I am a primary organiser of the International Women’s Day Conference to be held at QUB in March 2018 on women and religion. I am also on the organising committee for the Tudor & Stuart Ireland Conference to be held at QUB in August 2018. I also served on the Postgraduate Staff Student Consultative Committee for the 2016-2017 academic year and will be organising the Postgraduate History Seminar Series for all of 2018.

Lucy Wray is a first year Ph.D. Student at Queen’s University Belfast where she previously received her B.A in English and History and M.A. in History. Her thesis entitled, ‘The Photographer and the City: the work of A.R. Hogg in recording social conditions in early twentieth-century Belfast’ is supervised by Dr Olwen Purdue, Dr Kieran Connell and Dr Vivienne Pollock (Ulster Museum). Her project will examine A.R Hogg and his contemporaries, exploring the role of the photographer as an observer and actor in early twentieth-century Belfast. It will discuss the relationship between photography and themes such as working-class social conditions, public health and social welfare. Moreover, it will consider the links between photography, associational culture and philanthropy in the British industrial city. Lucy is a Northern Bridge Doctoral studentship award holder and is working  in collaboration with the historic photographic collections of National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI). Consequently, she is interested in public history and cultural heritage.

She is also interested in gender and consumption and her MA thesis, supervised by Dr Leonie Hannan, was entitled “Glittering consumer palaces’: Exploring gender and consumption in the  Belfast Department Store, c. 1860-1920’. More broadly, she has research interests in social and cultural history and material and visual cultures.