REPUTATIONS: ‘Friend of the poor’: Dora Maguire

In R.M. Fox’s collection of biographical essays Rebel Irishwomen (1935), included alongside Maud Gonne MacBride, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and Constance Markievicz is an obscure London-born nurse, Dora Maguire. Who was she and what did she achieve during her short life? By James Curry An unlikely Irish republican and labour activist, Theodora Agnes Eleanor Maguire was born … Read more

Would the countess have supported repeal of the 8th?

Constance Markievicz: feminist, revolutionary—and Catholic. By Mary Kenny During the 2018 referendum on removing the eighth amendment from the Irish Constitution (which recognised the right to life of the unborn), feminist campaigners for repeal invoked images of the revolutionary and feminist Constance Markievicz to support their side of the campaign. But would Con Markievicz have … Read more

Three EPIC exhibitions

EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, collaborates with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to showcase the global Irish diaspora. By Angela Byrne In 2018–19 EPIC is working together with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to celebrate global Irish emigration through the centuries, and to enhance connections with the Irish diaspora today, … Read more

ARCHAEOLOGY & EUGENICS: Harvard, Celtic skulls and eugenics in de Valera’s Ireland

The Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland, 1932–6.   By Mairéad Carew The driving force behind the Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland was eugenics, now considered a pseudo-science and a variant of scientific racism. It was then regarded as the science of better breeding for human beings and had been established as a discipline in several … Read more