Did Ireland Have an Empire Lecture in Physics Lecture Theatre at 11:00am with a hybrid lecture via Zoom on December 9th.

Ireland was England’s oldest colony.  How did the English empire actually function in early modern Ireland and how did this change over time?  What did access to European empires mean for people living in Ireland?  This talk answers these questions at a moment when events of the early twenty-first century – Brexit, ‘the culture wars’, the campaigns around ‘Black Lives Matters’ and ‘Statues must fall’ – along with calls for reparations and the restitution and repatriation of plundered artefacts have kindled a greater awareness of the importance of revisiting the history of empires.

Brief Bio:

Professor Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin. She was a driving force behind the 1641 Depositions Project and the development of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute. She chaired the Irish Research Council (2015-21). In 2023 received an Advanced ERC for VOICES, a project on the lived experiences of women in early modern Ireland.  She is the author or editor of numerous articles and 13 books.  Her latest Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World (Oxford, 2023) is based on the 2021 Ford Lectures in Oxford.  In 2023 she was awarded the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Humanities.