Sparky Booker

IRC Postdoctoral Fellow

abooker@tcd.ie

Biography

I studied History and English as an undergraduate at Trinity from 2001-2005 and received an MPhil in Medieval History in 2007 for my thesis ‘Old English representations of themselves and others: degrees of continuity from the medieval to the early modern’. I began my IRCHSS-funded doctoral studies in 2007 under the supervision of Seán Duffy and was awarded a PhD in 2012. My doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Gaelicisation and identity in the ‘four obedient shires’ of Ireland, 1399-1534’.

Research

My work examines cultural exchange in the English colony in later medieval and early modern Ireland, focusing on how extensive assimilation impacted English and Irish identities in this period. I am particularly interested in intermarriage, sumptuary law, onomastics and linguistic exchange, and the legal and social status of the Irish in the colony.

Publications:

• Sparky Booker, Intimates and Enemies: cultural exchange and the limits of assimilation in the ‘four obedient shires’ of Ireland, 1399-1534 [Forthcoming]
• Sparky Booker and Cherie N. Peters (eds), Tales of Medieval Dublin [Forthcoming, Four Courts Press, 2014]
• ‘Irish clergy and the diocesan church in the ‘four obedient shires’ of Ireland, 1399-1534’ [Forthcoming, Irish Historical Studies, 154 (November, 2014)]
• ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’ in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 113 (2013)
• ‘Ashamed of their very English names?: Identity and the use of Irish names by the English of late medieval Ireland’ in Gabriela Signori and Christof Rolker (eds), Umstrittene Zugehörigkeit(en). Spätmittelalterliche Praktiken der Namengebung im europäischen Vergleich (Konstanz, 2010), pp 131-48.
• Gaelicisation and cultural exchange in late medieval Dublin’ in Seán Duffy (ed.) Medieval Dublin X (Dublin, 2010), pp 287-98.

Research Papers:

• March 2013, Irish Historical Studies lecture series, Boston College, Dublin
  Title: Inter-ethnic marriage and the colonial community of Dublin, Meath, Louth and Kildare c.1400-c.1540'
• January 2013, University College Cork History Seminar, UCC
  Title: ‘Acculturation, Gaelic Ireland and the Englishry, c.1450-1550’
• September 2012, WHN Conference: Women, State, and Nation, Cardiff
  Title: ‘Intermarriage and the role of women in mediating interaction between the English and Irish in late medieval Ireland’
• September 2012, Tudor and Stuart Ireland, UCD
  Title: ‘Sumptuary law in Tudor Ireland in its European context’
• May 2012, Making Money Seminar, TCD
  Title: ‘Reflections on the Franchise Roll of Dublin, 1500-1512’
• December 2011, James Lydon Medieval Seminar, TCD
  Title: ‘Mantles, moustaches and saffron shirts: sumptuary legislation in late medieval Ireland’
• July 2011, International Medieval Congress, Leeds
  Title: ‘Enemies as confessors? Irish priests in late medieval county Louth’
• December 2010, Tales of Medieval Dublin, Dublin
  Title: ‘The Knight’s Tale: Sir Christopher St Lawrence (d. 1589 AD)’