ABOUT ME

I am an Assistant Professor in Irish History and Director of the MA History of Family. I am a historian of the family, gender and sexuality, and my work focuses on Presbyterian families in Ireland and North America across the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I have published extensively on Irish family life on topics including courtship, sex and the making of marriage; illegitimacy and the family; youth and adolescence; marriage and marital breakdown; siblinghood; the material culture of sex; fatherhood and pregnancy; and queer approaches to the Irish family. You can follow my work at my website.

Before joining the University of Limerick, I taught History at the University of Hertfordshire and Queen’s University, Belfast. Between 2016 and 2017, I was the postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded project ‘Bad Bridget: Criminal and Deviant Irish Women in North America, 1838-1918’, co-led by Professor Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University, Belfast) and Professor Leanne McCormick (Ulster University).

I am the current (2025-30) serving President of the International Federation for Research in Women's History I am also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

CURRENT RESEARCH

I have two books in progress that extend understandings of family life in Ireland through an exploration of Presbyterian sources. My first book, Pious & Promiscuous: Love, Life & the family in Presbyterian Ulster, will be published in October 2025 with the Royal Irish Academy. This book tells the story of family life in eighteenth and nineteenth century Ulster through the prism of the Presbyterian community. Brought over to Ireland in the early seventeenth century by Scottish settlers, Presbyterianism soon established itself as the largest religious grouping in the province of Ulster. Drawing on a combination of personal papers, diaries and correspondence belonging to Presbyterian families, as well as records produced by the Presbyterian church courts, this book casts light on the everyday experiences of women and men who lived, loved, and laboured in Ireland.

My second book grows out of my externally funded project, ‘Sexuality and Social Control: Presbyterians in Ireland and North America, 1717-1830’. This project is a comparative study of the sexual and social worlds of Presbyterian women and men on both sides of the Atlantic. Salacious stories of stolen trysts in backrooms, fields and forests; misbehaving ministers who vomited at the pulpit and challenged their congregation to fisticuffs; and brawling church members who traded colourful insults over cups of whiskey form the basis of this project. 

This project is funded by several awarding bodies, including:

• British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant Scheme
• Research Fellowship from the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (USA)
• Women's History Association of Ireland, Anna Parnell Travel Grant
• R.J. Hunter Bursary from the Royal Irish Academy

PAST RESEARCH

My interests in family life in Ireland led to the creation of RIFNET: Reconstituting the Irish Family Research Network, a major international research collaboration that I co-conceived and co-led with Dr Maeve O’Riordan (UCC). Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Irish Research Council, RIFNET aimed to tell the story of Irish families that sit outside of what we perceive as the ‘traditional’ norm. The network brought together academic researchers, museum and heritage professionals, and members of the public to re-examine meanings of family in Ireland both past and present.

In addition to the publication of a special issue (2024) that sets ‘A New Agenda for the Irish Family’, the project produced a series of impactful engagement activities with the general public. In April 2022, RIFNET held an object storytelling event at the National Museum of Ireland to capture stories of LGBTQ+ family life in Ireland. The outputs of this event – a digital exhibition of objects and oral histories, have created an invaluable learning resource for members of the public and scholars of the Irish family, https://rifnet.org/. Working with the Digital Repository of Ireland, we also ensured that our collection would be permanently preserved and accessible to the wider public, https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/tb09xz88b

RESEARCH INTERESTS

History of the family and its relationships; the Life Cycle; Women and Gender in eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland; History of Emotions; Sexualities; Presbyterianism & Dissenting Traditions

I welcome expressions of interest from potential doctoral students in these areas.

TEACHING

I currently lead* & teach on the following modules:

MA History of Family

• Introduction to History of Family*
• Linking Families to Communities*
• People on the Move: Studying Migration*
• History Research Seminar
• Directed Reading in History

Undergraduate History

• Sex, Scandal & Sin: Negotiating Deviancies in Ireland and North America (special subject)

RESEARCH STUDENTS

Ph.D.

• Rachel Parsons, 'Making Love in Ireland: Gender, Material Culture and Emotions, 1750–1830' (with Dr Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman)

• Sarah-Jayne Clements, 'Breaking Barriers. Disability Inclusion in Archaeology’ (with Prof. Grace Lees-Maffei, University of Hertfordshire)

MRes

• Kiran Seera, ''Domestic Disorder: Crime, Kinship, and Space in Bedfordshire, c. 1650-1790' (completed 2024, University of Hertfordshire, with Dr Jennifer Evans).
• Alexandra Brown, 'Fidelity and the concept of male faithfulness in Georgian Relationships, 1714-1830' (completed 2024, University of Hertfordshire, with Dr Jennifer Evans).