Projects and Awards

Staff in our School have a strong record of external funding for their research projects, over time securing grants and awards as sole or lead researchers and as research team members from prestigious national and international awarding bodies such as the Mellon Foundation, the North-South Research Programme (Shared Ireland Fund) and Research Ireland. In keeping with the School’s significant interest in public engagement and contribution, colleagues also often work with external funders to pursue projects that connect their research with community development in the areas of culture, public policy, and social services and practices, among others.

Below are examples of some current research projects that receive external funding. For further information on the wealth of research carried out by our staff, please see their individual profiles in the School Staff Directory.

Imirce: Irish Emigrant Letters and Memoirs from North America (2020- )

The Moore Correspondence (2016- )

Sites of Fracture: Twentieth-Century Ireland at the Margins of Capitalism (July 2025-June 2027)

this/OUR (2025)

Adaptation, globalisation and loss: A more-than-human history of hydro-electricity in twentieth-century Ireland (Sept 2024-August 2026)

Imirce: Irish Emigrant Letters and Memoirs from North America (2020- )

James Brenan, News from America, 1875.  Collection Crawford Art Gallery, Cork

Imirce involves a) the construction of a database to make the Kerby A. Miller Collection of letters and memoirs composed by Irish emigrants to North America available online; and b) the continuation of Miller’s work through continued collection and transcription of such materials and their addition to the database.

 https://imirce.universityofgalway.ie/p/ms

Funding: Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport, Gaeltacht and Media, 2023–24 (c.E200,000); Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2025–26 ($300,000);  University of Galway Strategic Fund, 2021 (E100,000)

Co-PIs: An tOllamh Breandán Mac Suibhne (History, SOHAP) and Prof. Daniel Carey (English, SEMCA)

The Moore Correspondence (2016- )

Samuel Moore of Baltimore (1834), by his brother-in-law Christopher Hughes. Collection: Trinity College Dublin.

This project involves the transcribing, editing and annotating of the correspondence of the Moore family of Derry, Ireland, and Baltimore, MD, USA, 1798–1846. The correspondence was set in train by the exiling of Robert Moore, ironmonger, of Bishop Street, Derry, in September 1798, and continued by family members on both sides of the Atlantic. It illuminates, inter alia, issues of family and gender and the transformation of Irish and American political and epistolary culture. The Irish Manuscript Commission will publish a multi-volume edition of the correspondence in 2026.

Funding: Trinity Long Room Hub, the Trinity College Library, the University of Galway, the Esme Mitchell Trust and the Ulster Local History Trust (various amounts and durations)

Co-PIs: An tOllamh Breandán Mac Suibhne (History, SOHAP), and Prof. David Dickson,  Fellow Emeritus (TCD), lead an international team working on the project

Sites of Fracture: Twentieth-Century Ireland at the Margins of Capitalism (July 2025-June 2027)

"The Dissour River, running through Glenbower Woods, Killeagh, Co. Cork, where the second 'Sites of Fracture' project event will take place (image: Kevin O’Sullivan)"

This project brings together academics, artists (Nocht Studio; Greywood Arts Centre, Co. Cork), and archivists (Co-operative Heritage Trust, Manchester; Mary Immaculate College Centre for Oral History, Limerick) to explore the history of twentieth-century Ireland through the lens of landscape and capitalism. There will be four public events: two symposia (Manchester and Birmingham) and two on-site workshops (Killeagh, Co. Cork, and Ballyragett, Co. Kilkenny). We will use these ‘sites of fracture’, where messy interactions between global capitalism and local alternative forms of organisation existed and produced rich seams of evidence, to develop new place-based tools to understand and share this history.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/projects/sites-of-fracture-20th-century-ireland-at-the-margins-of-capitalism

International co-lead: Dr. Kevin O’Sullivan (History, SOHAP)

this/OUR (2025)

"Wild garlic growing in Glenbower Woods, Killeagh, Co. Cork, the community-owned woodland which is the focus of the This/OUR project."

this/OUR is a community deep mapping project exploring Glenbower Wood, Killeagh, Co. Cork, through art, history, ecology and citizen science, led by artists Basil Al-Rawi, Chris Finnegan, Katie Nolan and Philip Ryan in partnership with Greywood Arts Center, Killeagh, and mentors Kevin O’Sullivan (historian, University of Galway) Cathy Fitzgerald (ecologist, Haumea Ecoversity) , Jonski Millar (archaeologist and citizen science expert). Using the focal point of this wood & the Dissour River that runs through it we will explore these pressures through the medium of a shared collective output: a three-dimensional interactive deep map.

https://thisour.ie/

Funding: Arts Council Ireland & Cork County Council (€88,000)

Mentor: Dr. Kevin O’Sullivan (History, SOHAP)

Adaptation, globalisation and loss: A more-than-human history of hydro-electricity in twentieth-century Ireland (Sept 2024-August 2026)

This research examines the historical development and impact of three hydro-electric schemes built on the rivers Liffey, Erne and Lee between 1937 and 1952. The unique assemblage of interdependent living creatures and human economies that characterised these river landscapes was permanently transformed by these dams. Due to their rare, and threatened ecologies, these riparian landscapes have long been the subject of scientific studies. Yet little has been done to marry this scientific knowledge with the social and environmental history of these dams or to uncover the relationships between humans, plants, and animals before and after their construction. This project addresses this imbalance. 

Funding: Research Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (€112,986.50)

PI: Dr. Aoife O’Leary-McNeice (History, SOHAP)