Research

I am currently developing a more-than human history of hydro-electricity in mid-century Ireland, focusing on the rivers Lee, Erne and Liffey. The research project considers the impact of three hydro-electric schemes built on the rivers Liffey, Erne and Lee between 1937 and 1952. The unique assemblage of interdependent living creatures and human economies that characterised these river landscapes was permanently transformed by these dams. Due to their rare, and threatened ecologies, these riparian landscapes have long been the subject of scientific studies. Yet little has been done to marry this scientific knowledge with the social and environmental history of these dams and the relationships between humans, plants, and animals before and after their construction. This project will address this imbalance. This is a stratigraphic story. I am drawing upon   rich source base, including archives of government departments and energy companies, folklore and oral history, and analysis of landscapes as living archives to produce a stratigraphic methodology for analysing the implications of human interventions on landscapes.

I seek to make visible the layers of animals, humans and organic forces that connected these local landscapes with networks of global industry and commerce. Examining the Liffey, Erne and Lee schemes together provides a unique opportunity to explore a programme of dam building over both a broad time period, and a wide geographic scale (three different landscapes in the south, east and north of the island).

I am also completing a monograph based on my PhD research. My book project explores the failure of imperial humanitarianism during the great Irish Famine. The suffering caused by the Famine prompted mass and unprecedented global sympathy. Donations were sent from miners in Wales, sailors on the Pacific Ocean, the British royal family, formerly enslaved people in the Caribbean, incarcerated communities from London to Norfolk island, and children both rich and poor. These offerings travelled through global networks facilitated by the British empire, the global Catholic Church, transnational activist groups, and the Irish diaspora, transformed from money into relief for the suffering Irish.

Yet despite the global scale, and the exceptional level of fundraising from across socio-economic, gender and ethnic divides, voluntary relief failed to meaningfully address the suffering of Irish famine victims. My book explores why voluntary famine relief failed. In doing so, it addresses enduring and universal questions regarding how best to provide relief in times of crisis.