This conference is focused on life in Ireland in 1919, and coincides with the opening of the exhibition Irish Wars at the National Museum of Ireland, Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks in December 2019. In particular, it aims to explore the effects that the impact of war – occurring at home and abroad – had on the Irish population; both for those who fought, and those soon engulfed by conflict as Irish soldiers returned from the battlefields in Belgium and France, and the Irish War of Independence slowly began.
Conference organised by: Education & Outreach Department and Brenda Malone, Curator of the Irish Wars exhibition, National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks, Benburb Street, Dublin 7.
Current Programme (subject to change)
9.30am: Registration
10am. Panel 1. Ireland after the War: Homecoming
Eve Morrison: Chair
Peter Barton. The Quiet Men: the Great War’s Silent Witnesses.
Ronan McGreevy. A coward if I return? How did Irish Veterans of the First World War fare afterwards?
Fionnuala Walsh. ‘The scars of war lay on their souls’: women’s experiences of demobilization in the aftermath of the Great War.
11.15am: Coffee
11.45am. Panel 2. Business, Employment and Loyalties
David Dickson. Chair
Wendy Williams. Seeing double: taxation and division at W&R Jacob & Co post-independence.
Jessica Handy. War, Insurrection and Guinness: Employment and loyalty in turbulent times.
Lar Joye. ‘A Divided Company’ – Dublin Port and the impact of the First World War, 1914-18, and the Irish Wars 1919-22.
1pm: Lunch
2pm: Panel 3 + 4. The Legacy of Trauma.
Catriona Crowe. Chair
Brendan Kelly. Trauma, shell-shock and the Richmond War Hospital, Dublin (1916-1919)
Fiona Loughnane. Bodily Trauma and the Archive: Photographs of the Loughnane Brothers.
Judith McCarthy & Dan Breen. From Behind the Walls of the Asylum: Stories of First World War survivors found in Local Authority Museum collections
3.15pm: Coffee
3.30pm:
Caitriona Clear. Chair
Linda Connolly. Sexual Violence and the Irish War of Independence: Evidence, Ethics and Trauma Histories.
Louise Ryan. Drunken Tans revisited: assessing how understandings of sexual violence during the Revolutionary years has changed in the last 20 years’
4.30pm: Performance
Louise Lowe & Owen Boss. Signposting the Past (featuring a short performance from ‘Beyond these Rooms’ by ANU Productions and CoisCéim Dance Theatre.)
For further details and booking (price €10-€15) please see: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/conference-after-the-war-peace-conflict-and-trauma-tickets-72937396717