Darragh Ryan
ryand22@tcd.ie
Biography
I studied History and Greek and Roman Civilisation at NUI Maynooth from 2006 to 2009, and began my MPhil in Early Modern History at Trinity in 2011. In December 2011 I contributed to a panel presentation on ‘Women and Tavern Culture in Early Modern Europe’ at a joint workshop between Trinity and the Reformation Studies Institute of the University of St Andrews.
Research
‘Women and the Coffee House in Eighteenth-Century England’
The English coffee house became a popular space for intellectual discussion from the late seventeenth century. My research focuses on the role of women in coffee houses, in the context of changing expectations about gender roles. I will assess a broad range of contemporary printed sources to investigate the place of women in the commercial, social and intellectual environment of the coffee shop. I will assess how an apparent crisis of gender roles was played out through publications about the culture of the coffee house.