Dr. Anna Bryson

Research Lecturer, Centre for Contemporary Irish History

Research Interests

Anna Bryson completed her BA and PhD at the Department of Modern History, TCD. In 2004 she joined the Department of Law at Queen Mary, University of London, as a Research Fellow on Professor Seán McConville's Irish Political Prisoners' project. This phase of the research, for the fourth and fifth volumes in the series, dealt with Irish political prisoners from the 1920 foundation of the Northern Ireland state until the Good Friday Agreement and its immediate aftermath, circa 2000. The research, which examined penal thought, policy and administration in a variety of shifting political and social contexts, drew on archives, official papers and special collections in the three states involved - Northern Ireland, the Irish Free State/Republic and Britain. The project was funded by the Irish Department of Justice, the Home Office, the NIO, the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies and the Leverhulme Foundation. Dr Bryson was responsible for setting up and conducting the bulk of 160 lengthy interviews in Ireland, Britain, North America and Australia. Interviewees ranged from former Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and former Ministers of Justice to ex-prisoners of various hues and affiliations. She has since advised both statutory and private organisations on the setting up of large-scale oral history projects.

In collaboration with Professor McConville, Anna Bryson in September 2010 embarked on The Peace Process: Layers of Meaning project (external). This work is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (€1.1 million). It has two major components. The first is to locate and record around 100 heritage interviews with key figures in peace and reconciliation over the last forty and more years. Interviews will be sought in Ireland, North and South, as well as Britain, the US and elsewhere. Capturing testimony on the most traumatic and significant events in Anglo-Irish history, the project aims to avert a major loss to national heritage and to preserve voices that will speak across the generations. These accounts will be held under embargo for 40 years but, with the participants’ permission, some of the material will be used for a book and other publications on conflict resolution. The other major aim is to establish an oral history training programme in the border area. This will equip community representatives, trainers and teachers with the necessary skills to initiate, fund and complete such work at ground level. The project directors have pledged to oversee to completion three exemplary cross-community projects. The recollections of everyman and everywoman will balance and give context to the 100 heritage interviews. The aim is to create a self-generating programme, resulting in a hub of innovative and ultimately healing oral history research in the border area.

Dr Bryson is responsible, with Professor McConville, for the oversight and development of the research programme. She has considerable experience of the use of interviews as a tool for social and historical investigation. Her publications encompass ethnographical research on Northern Ireland, prison diaries, biographies and criminology. She has advised a number of organisations on the design and implementation of complex oral history projects.

Select Publications

• Anna Bryson and Guy Beiner, 'Listening to the Past and Talking to Each Other: Problems and Possibilities Facing Oral History in Ireland' (2003) 30 Irish Economic and Social History
• Anna Bryson, ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: Researching Memory and Identity in Mid-Ulster, 1945-1969’ (2007) 35, 2 Oral History
• Anna Bryson (ed) The Insider: The Belfast Prison Diaries of Eamonn Boyce 1956-1962, The Lilliput Press, Dublin, 2007 The introduction to these diaries sets the context in the history of the IRA in the 1950s, British penal history and the genre of prison diaries.
• Anna Bryson, No Coward Soul: A Biography of Thekla Beere, IPA, Dublin, 2009 In spite of her double-minority status (as a Protestant and a woman) Thekla Beere (1901-1991) reached the top of the Irish Civil Service. Beere was invited in her retirement to chair the National Commission on the Status of Women.
• Seán McConville & Anna Bryson, ‘‘Observations on Criminal Justice in Accession States: Greece and Ireland’, in Maria Galanou (ed.), Essays in Honour of Professor C.D. Spinellis, Athens, N. Sakkoulas, 2010

Contact Details

Room A6005
Centre for Contemporary Irish History
Trinity College
Dublin 2.

Telephone: +353 1 896 3192
Fax: +353 1 896 3995
Email: brysonac@tcd.ie