Room H335
Telephone: 02476 522542
Email: m.luddy@warwick.ac.uk
BEd, MA, PhD (National University of Ireland)
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
I specialise in the social and political history of 19th and 20th century Ireland, examining in particular the history of women. I have published books and articles on women and philanthropy; 'outcast' women in Irish society; women's involvement in religious communities; the role of nuns in workhouse nursing and biographies of Isabella M. S. Tod and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington.
From 1997 to 2001 I acted as the Director of the Women's History Project, which was based in Dublin and funded by the Irish Government. The publications that resulted from this Project included:
Jean Agnew and Maria Luddy (eds), The Drennan-McTier Letters 1776-1817, 3 vols., (Dublin: Women's History Project/Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1998/1999).
A Directory of Sources for Women's History in Ireland (Women's History Project/Irish Manuscripts Commission: Dublin, 1999), published as a CD-ROM, but also available on the web at: http://www.nationalarchives.ie/wh/index.html This resource contains in the region of 100,000 pieces of information relating to women's place in Irish society from the earliest times to the present.
Also available on at the same web address is a database of information on Women in Twentieth-Century Ireland. This contains information from the files of the Department of the Taoiseach from 1922-1962. The information covers issues such as women and work, women in Irish political life and contains substantial information on the role of women in Irish society in the twentieth century.
I am especially concerned with the social and political attitudes expressed towards 'deviant' or 'outcast' groups in Irish society, the impact such attitudes had on the material lives of such groups and the significance of such attitudes in developing concepts of Irish national identity, particularly in the period between 1890 and 1930. Some of these themes are explored in my recent book Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800-1940 (Cambridge, 2007).
'The early years of the NSPCC in Ireland', Eire-Ireland, 44, 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer, 2009), 62-90.
'Magdalen asylums in Ireland, 1880-1930: welfare, reform, incarceration?' in Inga Brandes and Katrin Marx-Jaskulski (eds.), Armenfursorge und Wohltatigkeit. Landliche Gesellschaften in Europa, 1850-1930 [Poor Relief and Charity. Rural Societies in Europe, 1850-1930] (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2008), 283-305.
'"Women of the pave": prostitution in Ireland', History Ireland, 16, 3 (May/June 2008), 16-19.
'Sex and the single girl in 1920s and 1930s Ireland', The Irish Review, 35 (Summer, 2007), 79-91.
'Introduction: an overview of the suffrage movement', in Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (eds.), Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), xiii-xxii.
'A "sinister and retrogressive" proposal: Irish women's opposition to the 1937 draft Constitution', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, xv (2005), 175-95.
'Working women, trade unionism and politics in Ireland, 1830-1945' in Fintan Lane and Donal Ó Drisceoil (eds.), Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 44-61.
Women, Philanthropy and the Emergence of Social Work in Ireland (pamphlet) (Trinity College Dublin, 2005).
'Convent archives as sources for Irish history' in Rosemary Raughter (ed.), Religious Women and Their History: Breaking the Silence (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005), 98-115.
'Women's history' in Laurence M. Geary and Margaret Kelleher (eds.), Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A Guide to Recent Research (Dublin:University College Dublin Press, 2005), 43-60.
'The army and prostitution in nineteenth-century Ireland: the case of the wrens of the Curragh', Bullan: An Irish Studies Journal, 6, 1, (Summer/Fall, 2001), 67-83.
'Moral rescue and unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 1920s', Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30, 6 (2001), 797-817.
'Women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century Ireland' in Kathleen D. McCarthy (ed.), Women, Philanthropy and Civil Society (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001), 9-28.
'Women and work in nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland' in Bernadette Whelan (ed.), Women and Paid Work in Ireland, 1500-1930 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 44-56.
With Professor Gerardine Meaney, Department of English, University College Dublin, I have co-edited an AHRC-funded project entitled Women in Modern Irish Culture. This consists of a database of information on Irish women writers, working in the Irish and English languages, and writing in all genres for the period 1800-2005. The database is freely available at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wimic
Marriage in Ireland, 1660-1925
I am currently working with Professor Mary O'Dowd (Queen's University, Belfast) on the AHRC-funded project, Marriage in Ireland, 1660-1925. The project began on 1 September 2008 and will run to August 2011.
The aim of this project is to produce a major study on of the history of marriage in Ireland, north and south, from 1660-1925. The time frame begins with the Restoration of Charles II as King of Ireland and ends with the prohibition of divorce in the Irish Free State. The primary focus will be on the logistics of marriage among the social classes below the level of wealthy landowning families: how marriage was perceived, negotiated and controlled by church and state as well as by individual men and women. Although a significant amount of research has been completed on aristocratic marriage in Ireland surprisingly little has been done on the history of marriage among the 'middling' and lower social classes in rural or urban society. The project will, therefore, open up a new field of Irish social history
The project will examine three main themes:
Control and regulation of marriage by church and state
Choosing a marriage partner and the negotiation of formal and informal marriages
What happened when things went wrong: the logistics of marriage breakdown: why and how did marital partners separate and how was the separation viewed by the family, the community and church and state authorities
Key questions to be asked of each of these themes is the extent to which attitudes and practices changed over the time period examined and differed regionally and according to social class.
The project employs two postdoctoral Research Fellows, Dr Katie Barclay (based at Warwick) and Dr John Bergin (based at Queens).
Research Supervision
I have supervised MA and PhD dissertations on a range of topics relating to women in British and Irish history. The subjects have included nuns and convent life in 19th century England; the 'dirty protest' in Armagh Prison; women at the front during World War I; medical, social hygiene and youth work perspectives on young women, 1918-1939; and Irish women who migrated to England from the 1940s and joined religious communities.
