Peter Gray

#NOKINGS Dublin! Brilliant turnout at US Embassy 🇺🇸🇮🇪

An old woman reading St. Luke's Gospel Gerard Dou, ca. 1631 - ca. 1632 (Rijksmuseum)

Today, 18 Oct is the Evangelist's Feast Day.

YouTube video by QUB Irish Studies Irish Studies Seminar: Shinjini Chattopadhyay

If you missed Shinjini Chattopadhyay's talk on Monday on critical cosmopolitanism and Irish identity in 'Finnegan's Wake', there's now a recording available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VJv...

'Postcards are the email of their day': How cat memes went viral 100 years ago In the age of social media, we're living through a communications revolution. But this isn't the first one, nor is it the first time cats have been at the centre of social change.

www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Black background with gold swirls. Research Fellowships. Research Fellowships are open to experienced researchers, particularly those who are or have been prevented by routine duties from completing a programme of original research. Deadline: 6 November 2025, 4 pm. Leverhulme Trust logo and URL leverhulme.ac.uk/funding.

Looking to complete a piece of original research, but the day-to-day is getting in the way? Apply for a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, just three weeks left before applications close. 👉 www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-fel...

Our next vol contained some timely reflections Peter Gray (ed.), Victoria's Ireland? : Irishness and Britishness, 1837-1901 www.edepositireland.ie/collections/...

This will be a great seminar and start to the USIHS seminars for this semester from Seán Ó Hoireabhárd (Maynooth)
this THURSDAY! All welcome! Details below, the event will be hybrid - registration to attend online is still open via the link below (in the original post).

Joel Mokyr of “Why Ireland Starved” fame!

A chapbook that no doubt flew out of the peddler’s knapsack in early 19th century Ulster

*FIFTEEN THOUSAND JOBS LOST*.
If this were in a sector in which the PM could go and do a photoshoot looking like One Of The People, we’d have had a government intervention by now.

Famine's Long Shadow Even if food is surged into Gaza today, the history of weaponized mass starvation shows that the social aftershocks will reverberate for generations.

Famine’s Long Shadow

Even if food is surged into Gaza today, the history of weaponized mass starvation shows that the social aftershocks will reverberate for generations.

Alex de Waal

jewishcurrents.org/famines-long...

As the History Representative for ACIS, I have the distinct privilege to chair the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book. If you, or someone you know, has a book copyrighted in 2025 in Irish Studies please do consider submitting! Details here. 🗃️ #speirgorm

Irish Studies Seminar: Shinjini Chattopadhyay, Critical cosmopolitanism and Irish identity in Joyce

Due to circumstances outside our control (but not reflecting well on current US policy), next week's QUB Irish Studies seminar will now be online only.
www.qub.ac.uk/schools/Iris...

Home 2025

Doing a WSC talk for ‘Reclaim the Enlightenment’ Belfast on Wednesday evening at 6pm if anyone’s interested reclaimtheenlightenment.net

Belfast's own Crystal Palace (on Queen's Island, 1850s) - Marcus Ward / NLI

'THE SOIL IS OURS!! In which a MASKED LEAGUER will show how to Murder an Agent.'

Belated find - but useful for a talk on Wednesday: 'GULIELMO SHARHOMO CRAWFOOT, the celebrated posture master, athlete, and juggler' to perform in the 'GRAND ENTERTAINMENT' of the 1852 Co Down election, alongside various circusified Presbyterians [NLI]

A carved pillar of stone with a depiction of a face with staring eyes over interlaced design on the front edge, with the side depicting a figure mid stride holding a bishop's crozier and a handbell

The Bishop's Stone • Fermanagh

This unusual stone sculpture was first recorded by Dorothy Lowry Corry in the graveyard at Killadeas in the 1930s.

He holds a crozier and bell, indicating his status as a bishop or abbot.

It is thought to date to some time around the 8th - 10th century AD.

We are horrified by the attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue yesterday, which was also Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. We stand with the Jewish community in Manchester & Belfast, & condemn those who fan the flames of antisemitism in our divided society.

On Monday 6th Oct. we will be joined by Dr Alexandra Maclennan (Caen), who will speak on Cardinal Owen McCann (1907-94): die Roomse gevaar in apartheid South Africa'.
All welcome (in-person and online)
www.ticketsource.co.uk/institute-of...
[image courtesy of Southern Cross archive]

‘The sect of Alarmists’: The Third Party and the reluctant leadership of William Windham, 1793-4 - The History of Parliament In this latest post, the Georgian Lords welcomes a guest article by James Orchin, PhD student at Queen's University, Belfast, re-examining William Windham's

Today we welcome PhD student @jamesorchin.bsky.social with a guest post for the Georgian Lords on William Windham's 'Third Party', which split from the Foxites in the 1790s and was known as 'The Alarmists'...
historyofparliament.com/2025/10/02/t...
#HistParl

The sex lives of Presbyterians in 18th- and 19th-century Ulster were surprisingly colourful The Presbyterian church closely regulated the intimate lives of its members through a system of church court discipline.

If you need a pick me up this rainy afternoon, here's some colourful stories of sex & C18th Ulster Presbyterians to whet your appetite! #HistSex #HistFam @unioflimerick.bsky.social @ria.ie @theconversation.com theconversation.com/the-sex-live...

Those who like a chaser to their House of Guinness will be delighted to hear that 'Whiskey Trade Review' (Dublin), 1893-6. has been added to the British newspaper Archive
www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/resul...

Where now for Britain’s Universities? UK higher education now faces a very bleak future, retreating in the face of little public sympathy and limited political interest.

ICYMI on Tuesday, here's my *new* and *free* short-form summary of what's gone wrong in our universities. This is something of a last word really, because unless the Budget and White Paper do something really radical, the fate of much HE is already sealed.
politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/where-n...

Ai isn't a ticket to an A Will check who created this gem

On Monday 20 October we welcome Dr Ian d'Alton to QUB Irish Studies to talk about '1932 - seeing the same world differently: Irish Catholics and Protestants a decade after independence'. All welcome in-person and online. www.qub.ac.uk/schools/Iris...

ICYMI our view on using a levy on international students to fund maintenance grants

That’s all very well, but having a ‘Dublin’ funeral parade around St George’s Hall is not going to down well in either city.

Congrats Evi!