In 2016 the Women on Walls campaign by Accenture in partnership with the Royal Irish Academy aimed to make women leaders visible through a series of commissioned portraits, creating a lasting legacy for Ireland. Building on the success of this campaign the Royal Irish Academy Library is planning a one-day seminar to enhance the visibility of Irish women scientist, scholars, authors and others, by bringing together archival practitioners, librarians, historians and other stakeholders, to discover, discuss and disseminate women’s archival collections.

HER-ald: HER archives, literature and documents had a universal appeal to national and international archives wishing to promote the historic, and subsequently future, role played by women in all walks of life. By continuing the work of the Women on Walls campaign but through a different lens, the HER-ald seminar hoped to collaborate and bring together various national, local and academic archives inviting them to turn the camera inwards and discover these hidden women. The seminar, HER-ald: HER archives, literature, documents, took place in the Royal Irish Academy on Thursday 14 December 2023. This date also marks the 105th anniversary of Irish women over the age of 30 exercising their right to vote in a general election for the first time.

To view the day’s papers click here.

09.45    PANEL 1: Custodians

Chair: Barbara McCormack, Librarian (Royal Irish Academy)

Paper One: ‘Our future will become the past of other women’. Meadhbh Murphy, Deputy Librarian (Royal Irish Academy)

Paper Two: ‘The Playwright on the Stairs: Recovering Archival Loss of Irish Women Theatre-Makers’. Dr Barry Houlihan, Archivist (University of Galway)

Paper Three: ‘Hark! the Herald-Archivists’. Dr Jane Maxwell, Manuscripts Curator (Manuscripts and Archives Research Collection, the Library of Trinity College Dublin)

Paper Four: ‘In Her Words: Women in PRONI’s Archives’. Lynsey Gillespie, Deputy Head of Public Services (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland) and Project Manager on Making the Future, Women in Archives

Paper Five: ‘Sources for Irish Women’s History database, 1999-2023’. Prof. Maria Luddy, Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish History (University of Warwick) and Director of the Women’s History Project, 1997-2001

 

13:00    PANEL 2: Consultants

Chair: Professor Emeritus Colm Lennon, MRIA (Maynooth University)

Paper One: ‘Using the archives to write histories of queer female sexualities in Ireland’. Dr Mary McAuliffe, Director of Gender Studies (University College Dublin)

Paper Two: ‘’This is for the historian not yet born’: reading unionist women’. Prof. Diane Urquhart MRIA, President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland and Professor of Gender History (Queen’s University Belfast)

Paper Three: ‘Victims? Women in compensation records from the Irish Revolution’. Dr Brian Hughes, Director of the Irish Association of Professional Historians and Lecturer of Twentieth Century Irish History (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick)

Paper Four: ‘The space between the notes: women’s voices across time’. Virginia Teehan MRIA, Chief Executive Officer (Heritage Council)

 

15:10 PANEL 3: Creatives

Chair: Professor Emeritus Bernadette Whelan, MRIA (University of Limerick)

Paper One: ‘50 years of Pioneering Women at the University of Limerick: Past and Present.’ Using oral history testimonies to make visible those that have been forgotten in the official record’. Dr Martin Walsh, Curator of 50 Years of Pioneering Women: Past and Present and Lecturer of Social and Gender History (University of Limerick)

Paper Two: ‘Her voice, through the works of Cartoon Saloon’. Nora Twomey, Co-founder of Cartoon Saloon

Paper Three: ‘Curating Mná100’. Dr Sinead McCoole, Historian and Curator of Mná100

Paper Four: ‘Hidden Stories – the inspiration found in women’s archival collections’. Andrew Hughes, author The Coroner’s Daughter (Penguin-Transworld, 2018), 2023 One Dublin One Book.

 

17:00 Closing remarks, Prof. Mary O’Dowd MRIA, Emeritus Professor of Gender History (Queen’s University Belfast)