The 1766 religious census of Ireland was arguably the greatest social survey conducted in the country during the eighteenth century. This paper will explain how the survey was prosecuted, how thorough it was, and the uses that the returns were put to. He will argue that this great survey of Ireland deserves the title – ‘Ireland’s first census’.

Dr Brian Gurrin is the census and population specialist on the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland Project based at TCD. He has written extensively on census taking in Ireland and is especially interested in regional population changes in the pre-Famine period. He has lectured at the University of Limerick and Maynooth University. His areas of research include Irish religious demographics, and his co- authored volume (with Kerby Miller and Liam Kennedy), The Irish religious censuses of the 1760s, was published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2022. His joint authored volume (with Liam Kennedy, Donald MacRaild and Lewis Darwen), The Death Census of Black ’47: eyewitness accounts of Ireland’s Great Famine, was published earlier this year. He is currently examining the surviving statistics from the census of Ireland, 1813-15.

This event will be both in-person in the Irish Studies Seminar Room, 27 University Square, and online via MS Teams.

All welcome in-person or online