Robin Usher
Dr Robin Usher
R.J. Hunter Digital Fellow in History
Office: 27UQ/0G/004
Robin Usher is a graduate of TCD and Cambridge University, where he completed his PhD on 'Power, display, and the symbolic terrains of Protestant Dublin, c.1600-1760.' He has held research positions at Oxford University, Oxford Brookes University and TCD.
He is a historian of British and Irish architecture, landscapes, and urban society in the period 1580-1690, and has nearly ten years of experience in collaborative research, including employment by a major digital humanities project. While on hiatus from university appointments, his time has been committed to a study of the building projects of Sir Arthur Chichester, which requires extensive primary source research on plantation and urban settlement in early seventeenth-century Ulster. This work should reach the complete draft stage by the end of July 2024.
As R.J. Hunter Digital Fellow in History 2024-6, he will be working on the Ulster Settlers Database project, a collaboration between the Royal Irish Academy, Maynooth University and QUB, under the direction of Prof Emerita Mary O'Dowd and Prof Tom O'Connor.
Publications
'From prelacy to penury: the archiepiscopal castle and manor of Termonfeckin, County Louth, 1560-1660', Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. 151 (2024 for 2021, forthcoming).
'A Franco-Roman triumph in Restoration Ireland: the sculptural decoration of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. 23 (2022 for 2021): 10-35.
'The archbishops of Armagh and Drogheda's "faire house", 1613-1783', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. 23 (2021 for 2020): 14-37.
'Solomonic iconography in early Stuart Oxford: the south porch of St Mary the Virgin', Oxoniensia, vol. 80 (2015): 7-26.
'William Laud, the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, and "Biblical" architecture in early Stuart Oxford', British Art Journal, vol. 16, no. 1 (2015): 16-26.
'Parish churches of the Church of Ireland, 1600-1800', in Hugh Campbell, Livia Hurley, Rolf Loeber, John Montague, and Ellen Rowley (eds.), Art and architecture of Ireland, volume IV: Architecture, 1600-2000 (Yale University Press and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art: New Haven and London, 2015): 302-05.
'Government architecture, 1600-1800', in Hugh Campbell, Livia Hurley, Rolf Loeber, John Montague, and Ellen Rowley (eds.), Art and architecture of Ireland, volume IV: Architecture, 1600-2000 (Yale University Press and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art: New Haven and London, 2015): 173-75.
Protestant Dublin, 1660-1760: architecture and iconography (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 250pp. Long-listed for the William W.B. Berger Prize in British Art History.
'Domestic architecture, the "old" city, and the suburban challenge, c.1660-1700', in Christine Casey (ed.), The eighteenth-century Dublin town house: form, function, and finance (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010): 59-72.
Dawson, Molesworth & Kildare Streets, D2: a study of the past, a vision for the future (Dublin: Dublin Civic Trust, 2008). 89pp.
'Reading Architecture: St. Andrew's church, Dublin, 1670–1990', Visual Resources, vol. 24, no. 2 (2008): 119-32.
'Reading the cityscape: Dublin's churches, 1670-1720', in Rosalind Crone, David Gange, and Katy Layton Jones (eds.), New perspectives in British cultural history (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2007): 22-36.
'Chapel Royal and symbol of the "Church Militant": the iconography of Christ Church and St Patrick's Cathedrals, Dublin, c.1660-1760', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. 10 (2007): 200-23.