Two IRC Advanced Laureate Awards for Trinity’s Department of History

These awards valued at approximately €1m each are among sixteen such awards made to the Irish researchers under the 2022 call across 4 scientific panels (Humanities, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering and Social Sciences).

In all Trinity College Dublin secured 7 of these awards under the 2022 call. Two of the four awards made nationally under the humanities panel were made to staff in Trinity’s Department of History.

The IRC Laureate call is the highest value and most prestigious of the funding awards currently in the IRC funding portfolio. It aims to support exceptional researchers to develop their track record, appropriate to their discipline and career stage and to leverage greater success for the IRC research system in the European Research Council (ERC) awards.

Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub said:

“These ambitious and insightful projects will help us to better understand many of the issues we are grappling with today: the legacies of colonialism, violence and war, and peace and resistance. I want to congratulate Professor Anne Dolan and Professor Micheál Ó Siochrú on their tremendous success.”

Trinity’s Dean of Research Sinéad Ryan commented:

"I am delighted to see excellent research across Trinity’s three faculties being recognised and supported by these IRC Laureate Awards. These research projects will advance human knowledge in exciting ways; they also contribute to our research ecosystem here at Trinity, and it is wonderful to see our researchers below speak so warmly about their colleagues and with such enthusiasm for working with the generation of researchers to come. Research is truly at the heart of what Trinity does."

Pictured left to right: Dr Cathal McCrory (Medical Gerontology), Dr Colm Cunningham (Neuroscience), Dr Anne Dolan (History) and Prof. Micheál O'Siochrú (History)

Provost Linda Doyle congratulated the awardees saying:

“I am really proud of this stellar group of researchers who have been successful in the IRC Advanced Laureate Awards programme.

The funding of talented people and their creative research ideas is so hugely important.

I am also delighted to see such a spread of disciplines represented among the awardees, ranging from psychology to immunometabolism, history to gerontology, neuroscience and neurogenetics.”

Anne Dolan

Title of project: Witnessing war, making peace: testimonies of revolution and restraint in inter-war
Ireland (WITNESSING)

Summary: Despite a war of independence (1919-21) and civil war (1922-23), Ireland’s experience of violence was relatively restrained compared to much of inter-war Europe and it returned to stability remarkably quickly.  Eric Hobsbawm noted the Irish Free State as one of only five European states, new or old, where ‘adequately democratic institutions continued to function’ between the wars.  What we still do not know is why.  This project explains why Ireland was so relatively restrained in its use of violence during and after its revolution, and in doing so, it will establish new paradigms for exploring the history of violence and pioneer the history of a much less considered phenomenon – restraint.  To do this it draws on the testimony of those who have been largely overlooked: the bystanders who witnessed violence in Ireland, who first put experiences of violence into words, and who fundamentally shaped what we can know about it now.

 Anne said:

“Funding of this kind for a history project will fundamentally change the scale and scope of what can be achieved.  My project, ‘Witnessing war, making peace’, simply could not be undertaken without it.  This is a really exciting opportunity to think about modern Ireland in new ways and to work collaboratively with historians of Ireland and Europe on a project that will help to launch the careers of some exceptional young historians.”

Micheál Ó Siochrú

Title of project: Cromwellian Ireland and the Transformation of the English Atlantic World (EMPIRE)

The EMPIRE project will explore Ireland’s crucial role in England’s (and later Britain’s) global expansion. The mid-eighteenth century witnessed Britain’s emergence as the foremost power in the Western World, enjoying unparalleled wealth, influence, and geographical reach. But how did it obtain such an exalted position and more specifically, what were the processes that facilitated such a dramatic rise to prominence? This question lies at the heart of the EMPIRE project. Challenging the dominant, Anglo-centric narrative, this project takes a radically different approach, investigating how from the mid-seventeenth century, Ireland provided England with a decisive advantage over its continental rivals on the world stage. Irish historiography focuses primarily on the Irish diaspora in the emerging English Atlantic Empire, but EMPIRE will instead turn the spotlight on the country, rather than its people, as the significant source of finance and resources driving England’s expansion overseas and its global dominance thereafter.

Micheál said:

“I am delighted to receive this IRC Advanced Laureate award, which provides an exciting opportunity to reinterpret Ireland’s global role in the seventeenth century, exploiting a range of newly accessible material and data. This period witnessed England’s (and then Britain’s) gradual emergence as the foremost power in the Western World, enjoying unparalleled wealth, influence, and geographical reach. But how did it obtain such an exalted position? This question lies at the heart of the EMPIRE project, which argues that Irish resources provided England/Britain with a decisive advantage over its continental rivals on the world stage. In fact, the Cromwellian conquest and subsequent exploitation of Ireland in the 1650s underpinned the entire imperial project.”