Catherine Porter

Human Geography; Historical and Cultural Geography; Digital and Spatial Humanities; Digital Cultural Heritage; Landscape Change; Geographic Information Systems; History of Cartography; Health and Place.

Dr Catherine Porter is an Associate Professor in Geography and was Head of Discipline at the University of Limerick from 2023 to 2026. Catherine was awarded a PhD in Geography from Queen's University Belfast. Before working at the University of Limerick, she held research and lecturing roles at Lancaster University, the University of Hull, and Queen's University Belfast. She was a serving member of the Royal Irish Academy Historical Studies Multidisciplinary Committee (2022-2026) and, from 2020 to 2023, held the honorary title of Visiting Scholar at Queen's University Belfast. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Catherine is a historical geographer with research interests in geospatial technologies and mixed-method approaches for analysing and interpreting early source material. She specialises in the narratives of early cartography, focusing on maps of Ireland from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, alongside landscape change and heritage. She has worked on research projects funded by the European Research Council, Research Ireland/the Irish Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Heritage Council (Ireland), the Royal Irish Academy, and the J B Harley Trust, for which she was awarded the J. B. Harley Research Fellowship in the History of Cartography.

Catherine is currently the PI on:

- Heritage Council and FAHSS co-funded project, 'Locating Bench Marks, Preserving Heritage: A Community Initiative to Record County Limerick's Ordnance Survey Heritage'.  

- The Research Ireland / Arts and Humanities Research Council co-funded project, 'OS200: Digitally remapping Ireland's Ordnance Survey Heritage'. 

- Royal Irish Academy funded project (Nowlan Digitisation Grant), 'Digitising the Abstracts of the Principal Lines of Spirit Levelling in Ireland'. 

Past Projects as PI: 

- The Royal Irish Academy (R J  Hunter Bursary) project, 'From the plat to the field: a new view on the escheated maps of Ulster' [University of Limerick]. 

- The Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, UL, project, 'The Looney Map of Tipperary' [University of Limerick]. 

- The J B Harley Research Trust (J B Harley Fellow), project, 'The Making of Maps: New Ways of Assessing How Early Surveyors Mapped Plantation Ireland' [Queen's University Belfast]. 

Past Projects as a post-doctoral researcher:

- Arts and Humanities Research Council project, ‘Inventor of Britain: The Complete Works of Humphrey Llwyd’ (named Research Fellow) [Queen's University Belfast and University of Exeter]. 

- Leverhulme Trust project, ‘Mapping Lineages’ (named Research Fellow) [University of Liverpool and Queen's University Belfast]. 

- European Research Council project, ‘Spatial Humanities: Texts, GIS & Places’ (Research Associate) [Lancaster University, UK].  

Current Doctoral Research Supervision:

- Julien Santos de Mello - Healing Roots: Women and Traditional Medicine in Irish Folklore (School of History and Geography and Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence). 

Human Geography; Historical and Cultural Geography; Digital and Spatial Humanities; Digital Cultural Heritage; Geographic Information Systems (GIS); History of Cartography; Early Modern Britain and Ireland; Early Health and Place.

Currently convening the following modules:

GY4033: Population Dynamics

GY4006: Practicing Geographical Research

GY4038: Cultural and Historical Geography

GY4007: Geography FYP I

GY4008: Geography FYP II