Irish Centre for Histories of Labour and Class

The Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class (ICHLC)

Established at University of Galway in February 2013, the ICHLC aims to promote scholarship in and public engagement with the histories of labour and class generally, but with special emphasis on Ireland and the Irish abroad. The ICHLC has hosted a number of significant international conferences, including ‘Irish Travellers/Mincéir and the State1922 – 2022: The Struggle for Equality' in 2022 and ‘Labour, Gender, and Class in the Struggle for Irish Independence, c. 1918-24′ in 2019. It has organised dozens of other events at the University of Galway, at the Galway Mechanics Institute, at the Town Hall Theatre and other venues, and has attracted scholars on labour and class to carry out research at the University. It has collaborated or is collaborating with several bodies, inter alia, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Irish Labour History Society, and Edinburgh University’s School of History.

Co-Directors: Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley; Dr John Cunningham

Histories of Labour and Class

Labour history has traditionally been preoccupied with the ‘high’ politics of labour organization, with institutional studies of trade unions, labour parties, and associated topics such as strikes, policies and leadership. However, in recent decades its parameters have widened to include the study of the working class in the context of areas such as family life, institutional life, mentalities and values, culture, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. A transnational approach has also characterised the recent direction of the study of labour and class, with a particular focus on connections between the developed and underdeveloped worlds, and with an interrogation and re-conceptualisation of terms such as ‘labour’, ‘worker’, ‘strike’ and ‘class’. The ICHLC, as reflected in its title, engages in these area of research, as well as supporting archival retrieval and recording oral testimony.