The ceramic designer Frederick Vodrey (1845–97) had a small pottery behind his warehouse in Moore Street and in 1880 opened a retail outlet in Mary Street. The shop is described in The industries of Dublin: ‘The pottery establishment of Mr Vodrey is the only representative firm in this line in Dublin that has upheld the … Read more
Last year’s Athens Olympics and Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union have naturally drawn our attention to the eastern Mediterranean. While travel to mainland Greece, Turkey and the Mediterranean islands is now commonplace, the situation was very different in the mid-eighteenth century, when one of the pioneers of modern Mediterranean travel visited the area … Read more
Vilified by her English adversaries as ‘a woman who hath imprudently passed the part of womanhood’, Grace O’Malley was ignored by contemporary chroniclers in Ireland, yet her memory survived in native folklore. Nationalists later lionised her as Gráinne Mhaol, a warrior who would come over the sea with Irish soldiers to rout the English. She … Read more
PF: To what extent was a sense of Irish ethnicity a factor drawing you towards an academic interest in Irish Studies and particularly Irish migration? KM: Only in retrospect. Being born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, one primarily thought of oneself as being white as against others who were not. There was a much less … Read more