The three distillations of Belfast’s whiskey industry; The rise, fall, and renaissance from the 1860s to present day

Abstract: This dissertation examines the Irish whiskey and distilling industry of Belfast from the period of its initial boom in the late 19th century, to its decline in the 20th century, and its current reemergence and renaissance it is experiencing today. The dissertation looks at the social impact distilleries had on the city of Belfast by drawing on primary sources, including director minute books, letter books, and day books of Belfast and Ulster distilleries, contemporary newspaper reports, parliamentary papers, and pictures from the archives and myself. (MA History dissertation)

The Changing Face of Belfast: An Oral History of Immigration to the City after the Signing of the Good Friday Agreement

Abstract: This dissertation investigates the history of migration to Belfast from outside of the UK from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 to the time of writing in 2024. Using an oral history approach, it aims to centre the voices of migrants and use them to guide the conversation around how the recent history should be viewed. Combined with newspaper reporting and census data from the period, the interviews also allow for a more nuanced understanding of the differences in the experience of immigrants to the city in the last 26 years as compared to the during the Troubles conflict before. The findings also highlight the mismatch between the perception of Belfast as an extremely racist place, and its reality as a city with problems like any other. The dissertation expands on the recent literature by Jack Crangle and Marta Kempny that attempts to view Belfast and Northern Ireland through the perspective of an immigrant. (MA Public History Dissertation)

‘Flavit et dissipati sunt’ – Public history representations of the Spanish Armada in Ireland

Abstract: The story of the Spanish Armada is one of the most famous in European history, the result of the religious and colonial tensions that dominated Tudor era Europe. In schools and museums, particularly in England and Spain, people are taught about how the English fleet were able to outsmart the undeniably more powerful Armada, yet many are unaware of Ireland’s role in this event. Over twenty ships and six thousand men wrecked along the Irish coast, making it one of the worst maritime tragedies in Irish history. However, there are limited historical sites and memorials dedicated to this tragedy; why is this? This dissertation will analyse public history representations of the Spanish Armada in Ireland, using the Ulster Museum, Belfast, the Tower Museum, Derry, and the Spanish Armada Interpretive Centre, Sligo, to exemplify the different forms of Armada memory, to highlight the lack of others, and the possibilities available using public history. (MA Public History dissertation)

Northern Ireland: Living With the Troubles (Imperial War Museum) - A Review

A Review of the Imperial War Museum's 'Living with the Troubles' Exhibition (26 May 2023 - 7 January 2024)

Cohort component population estimates for Ireland, 1911-1920: A new county-level dataset for use in historical demography

Abstract: This paper introduces a new dataset of vital statistics and cohort component population estimates at a spatially-disaggregated level for the island of Ireland for the period 1911-1920. The raw data were digitised by the authors using official UK government statistics. The population estimates were then derived by the cohort component method from demography. These data provide novel intercensal population estimates at the county level that will be beneficial for researchers working in historical demography, as well as in economic and social history. The data provided can be readily reused and extended by other researchers to produce further series and indicators. An example application of the data in this manner is Colvin and McLaughlin (2021), who combine these population estimates with mortality statistics from the Spanish flu pandemic to demonstrate how demographic composition affects the interpretation of data on public health crises.

Published as: Colvin, C. L., McLaughlin, E., & Richmond, K. J. J. (2022). Cohort Component Population Estimates for Ireland, 1911–1920: a New County-Level Dataset for Use in Historical Demography: Social and Economic History. Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 7(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1163/24523666-bja10022

Flags of our Fathers?: An Inner East Belfast Flags Survey 2001-2021

Abstract. A survey of the number, type and location of flags in some loyalist areas of inner east Belfast since 2001. It was decided to do the survey on the day after the Twelfth parades which would be when the greatest number of flags would be on display.

Finding aid: Digital sources on the inter-communal violence in Belfast in 1920-1922. 

Abstract: The inter-communal conflict in Belfast in 1920-1922 was, arguably, one of the most violent episodes of the Irish Revolution. It claimed lives of up to 500 people, up to 10,000 workers were expelled from their jobs and 23,000 people became homeless. This finding aid presents the digitised primary sources available on the conflict in the two collections of the Military Archives of Ireland: Bureau of Military History (BMH) and the Military Service Pension Collection (MSPC).

Death, Demography and the Denominator: Age-Adjusted Influenza-18 Mortality in Ireland

Abstract: Using the Irish experience of the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic (“Influenza-18”), we demonstrate that pandemic mortality statistics are sensitive to the demographic composition of a country. We build a new spatially disaggregated population database for Ireland’s 32 counties for 1911-20 with vital statistics on births, ageing, migration and deaths. Our principal contribution is to show why, and how, age-at-death data should be used to construct the age-standardised statistics necessary to make meaningful comparisons of mortality across time and space. We conclude that studies of the economic consequences of pandemics must better control for demographic factors if they are to yield useful policy-relevant insights. For example, while Northern Ireland had a higher crude death rate during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, it also has an older population; age-adjusted mortality paints a very different picture.

This paper has been published in Economics and Human Biology, 41 (2021).

The famine that wasn't: 1799-1801 in Ireland

Abstract: As the 19^th century opened the Irish poor had far more immediate and important concerns than controversies relating to the Act of Union. In the wake of two successive bad harvests in 1799 and 1800 food prices in Ireland soared to heights, relative to pre-crisis levels, that exceeded those of the Great Famine of the 1840s. The mystery, therefore, is why excess mortality turned out to be light relative to the repeated shocks to people’s living standards.  The answers lie in the realms of political economy, epidemic disease, and the nature of Irish rural society circa 1800.

Representations of Irish Famine and Rebellion in the British Satirical Press, 1845-49

Abstract: This paper considers the representation of the Great Irish Famine (1845-50) and the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848 through the prism of several lesser-known British satirical periodicals of the period, principally Joe Miller the Younger (1845), The Man in the Moon (1847-8) and The Puppet Show (1848-9). It compares their treatment of Irish issues to that of the more successful Punch (to which they emerged as rival publications), and assesses the likely impact of such satirical visual outputs on British debates about the Irish crisis. The paper gives particular attention to the work of the French satirical artist Paul Gavarni in The Puppet Show.