Dr. Rachel Moss

Research Associate

Research interests

My research is focused in two areas, Irish medieval art and architecture and digitization of visual art resources. My research in medieval art and architecture is currently centred on two specific projects. The first is an examination of the ‘afterlives’ of medieval buildings, how the architecture of the Middle Ages came to be perceived and ‘managed’ after the mid 16th century. This research forms part of part of a collaborative project, ‘Reconstructions of the Gothic Past’, funded by the IRCHSS. At a more general level, I am also the editor of and main contributor to volume one (Medieval Art and Architecture c.400-1600AD) of a major reference text on Irish Art and Architecture to be published by the Royal Irish Academy and Yale University Press in 2014.

My research in digital technologies concerns effective ways of preserving, cataloguing and disseminating large image collections. Research deals with issues such as image metadata standards, digital preservation, software developments, copyright of orphan images etc. This research feeds into a major initiative to digitize, catalogue and make available the image collections of the Irish Art Research centre.

Selected publications

• 'Continuity and change: the material setting of public worship in the sixteenth-century Pale' in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds) , Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, 1494-1660 (Four Courts Press, Dublin, forthcoming 2011)
• ‘Architectural sculpture at Glendalough’ in (eds) C. Doherty, L. Doran and M. Kelly, Glendalough: City of God (Four Courts Press, Dublin, forthcoming 2011)
• ‘Piety and politics: Funerary sculpture in Cashel c. 1500-1640’ in Roger Stalley (ed.), Medieval Art and Architecture in Limerick and South-West Ireland, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, vol. XXXIV (Maney Publishing, Leeds, forthcoming 2010)
• ‘Romanesque Sculpture in North Roscommon’ in  Thomas Finan (ed.), Medieval Lough Cé: History, archaeology and landscape (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2010)
• Romanesque chevron ornament: the language of British, Norman and Irish Sculpture in the twelfth century, BAR International Series 1908 (Oxford, Archaeopress, 2009)
• Making and Meaning in Insular Art (Dublin, 2007), pp342.
• 'Revivalist tendencies in the Irish Late Gothic: Defining a National Identity?' in (ed) M. Reeve, Reading Gothic Architecture (Brepols, Turnhout and New York, 2007), pp123-137.
• ‘A 12th Century Renaissance? Irish Romanesque Sculpture and the Insular Tradition’, Making and Meaning in Insular Art, edited by Moss, Rachel , (Four Courts Press, 2007), pp126 – 141
• Co-editor (with Colmán Ó Clabaigh and Salvador Ryan), Art and Devotion in Late Medieval Ireland (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2006), pp234.
• ‘Permanent expressions of piety: the secular and the sacred in later medieval stone sculpture’, Art and Devotion in Late Medieval Ireland, edited by Moss, R., O Clabaigh, C and Ryan, S. , (Four Courts Press, 2006), pp72 - 97
• 'Tales from the Crypt; the medieval stonework of Christ Church Cathedral' in (ed.) S. Duffy, Medieval Dublin Vol. 3, Four Courts Press ( Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2002), 95-114.
• 'Architecture' in The Heritage of Ireland (eds.) Buttimer, N, Guerin, H. and Rynne, C., (The Collins Press, Cork, 2000), 62-70.

Teaching

I am on research leave October 2010 – March 2011

Dr. Moss on the TCD Research Support System

Contact Details

Irish Art Research Centre,,
Department of the History of Art and Architecture,,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.

Telephone: 00 353 1 8963151
Fax: 00 353 1 8961438
Email: rmoss@tcd.ie