Professor David Dickson
Fellow Emeritus, History
Fellow Emeritus, Centre for Irish-Scottish Studies
Biography
A graduate of the University of Dublin, I was a Junior Research Fellow in the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast, before being appointed a lecturer in the Dept. of Modern History. Elected a Fellow of TCD in 1990, I served as Head of the Department of Modern History from 1995 to 1998 and retired as Professor of Modern History in 2017.
I served as University Registrar from 2004 to 2007, and as a member of the Governing Body of the Dublin Institute of Technology and of the Marino Institute of Education during those years and subsequently. I was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2006.
I was a founding editor of the journal 'Irish Economic and Social History', and was President of the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland from 2002 to 2008. I was also a co-founder of the African Studies Association of Ireland. I acted as PI of the PRTLI-funded Irish Scottish Studies Programme (1999-2006), and was Director of the TCD Centre for Irish-Scottish and Comparative Studies (later the TCD Centre for New Irish Studies) until 2017. I was awarded a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship by the Irish Humanities and Social Science Research Council for 2002-3, and was a PI of the IRCHSS-funded 'Ireland, Empire and Education' Project between 2008 and 2010.
I have published extensively on the social, economic and cultural history of Ireland in the long eighteenth century. Past collaborative research projects have included the demographic history of eighteenth-century Ireland; the comparative history of famine in Ireland; the social history of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Dublin; the 1798 Irish rebellion; and Ireland's entanglement with empire.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
David Dickson, The First Irish Cities: An Eighteenth-Century Transformation, First, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2021, 1 - 336pp
'Editorial Preface, 2020' in, editor(s)Charles Benson , The Dublin book trade, 1801-1850, 2021, Bibliographical Society, London, and The Lilliput Press, 2021, ppxiii - xv, [David Dickson]
David Dickson, 'Cork's new town (1780) and its afterlife', Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, 22, 2019, p42 - 51
David Dickson, What happened to modern Irish urban history?, Urban History, 46, (1), 2019, p10 - 20
Society and economy in the long eighteenth century in, editor(s)James Kelly , The Cambridge History of Ireland, III: 1730-1880, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp153 - 178, [David Dickson]
'Town and city' in, Eugenio F. Biagini & Mary E. Daly , The Cambridge social history of modern Ireland, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp112 - 128, [David Dickson]
'"Seven sisters?" The seaport cities of mid-eighteenth century Ireland' in, Thomas M. Truxes , Ireland, France and the Atlantic in a time of war, Abington, Routledge, 2017, pp93 - 107, [David Dickson]
'Novel spectacle? The birth of the Whiteboys, 1761-2' in, D.W. Hayton & Andrew R. Holmes, , Ourselves Alone? Religion, society and politics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland: Essays presented to S.J. Connolly, Dublin, Four Courts, 2016, pp61 - 83, [David Dickson]
David Dickson and David Fleming, 'Charles O'Hara's Observations on County Sligo, 1752-1773', Analecta Hibernica, 46, 2015, p85 - 119
David Dickson, Dublin: The making of a capital city, London, Profile Books, 2014, 1 - 718pp
Famine and economic change in eighteenth-century Ireland in, editor(s)Alvin Jackson , The Oxford handbook of modern Irish history, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp422 - 438, [David Dickson]
David Dickson, Dublin: The making of a capital city, North American [2nd.], Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2014, 1 - 718pp
1857 and 1908: Two moments in the transformation of Irish universities in, editor(s)David Dickson, Justyna Pyz and Christopher Shepard , Irish classrooms and British Empire Imperial contexts in the origins of modern education , Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2012, pp184 - 205, [David Dickson]
David Dickson, Rolf Loeber, Alan Smyth, Journal of a tour to Dublin and the counties of Dublin and Meath in 1699, Analecta Hibernica, 43, 2012, p47 - 67
David Dickson, Justyna Pyz and Christopher Shepard , Irish classrooms and British Empire: Imperial contexts in the origins of modern education , 1st, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2012, 1 - 252pp
1740-41 famine in, editor(s)John Crowley, William J. Smyth & Mike Murphy , Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, Cork, Ireland, Cork University Press, 2012, pp23 - 27, [David Dickson]
David Dickson, R.B. McDowell: A tribute, History Ireland, 19, (6), 2011, p36 - 40
David Dickson, Jane Ohlmeyer & Jan Parmentier, Irish and Scottish mercantile networks in Europe and overseas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Gent, Academia Press, 2007
Dickson, David, Old world colony: Cork and south Munster 1630-1830, 1st, Cork and Madison, Cork University Press and University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, 1 - 726pp
City, seasons and society in, editor(s)John Crowley, Robert Devoy, Denis Linehan & Patrick O'Flanagan , Atlas of Cork city, Cork, University Press, 2005, pp127 - 134, [Dickson D.]
David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and south Munster, 1630-1830, Cork, University Press, 2005
David Dickson, Thomas Bartlett, Daire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, 1798: A bicentenary perspective, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2003
David Dickson, Cormac Ó Gráda, Refiguring Ireland: Essays in honour of L.M. Cullen, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2003
Smoke without fire? Munster and the 1798 rebellion in, editor(s)Thomas Bartlett , 1798: A bicentenary perspective, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2003, [David Dickson, Daire Keogh & Kevin Whelan]
'Foreward' in, editor(s)Ailbhe MacShamhráin , The Vikings: an illustrated history, Dublin, Wolfhound Press, 2002, pp7 - 8, [Seán Duffy]
David Dickson, Ireland and Scotland: Nation, region, identity, Dublin, TCD Cenre for Irish-Scottish Studies, 2001
David Dickson, The hidden Dublin: The social and sanitary conditions of Dublin's working classes in 1845 described by Thomas Willis, Dublin, Trinity History Workshop, 2001
Dickson D., Death of a capital? Dublin and the consequences of Union, Proceedings of the British Academy, CVII, 2001, pp111 - 131
David Dickson, Breandán MacSuibhne, The outer edge of Ulster: A memoir of social life in nineteenth-century Donegal by Hugh Dorian, South Bend, University of Notre Dame Press, 2001
David Dickson, Breandán MacSuibhne, The outer edge of Ulster: A memoir of social life in nineteenth-century Donegal by Hugh Dorian, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2000
David Dickson, New foundations: Ireland 1660-1800 (2nd rev), Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2000
'Bandon', 'Cork', 'Drogheda', 'Dublin', 'Galway', 'KIlkenny', 'Kingstown', 'Limerick', 'suburbs', 'urban government', 'urbanization', 'Waterford' in, editor(s)S.J. Connolly , 'The Oxford companion to Irish history', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, [David Dickson]
Second city syndrome in, editor(s)S.J. Connolly , Kingdoms united?, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1998, [Dickson D.]
The state of Ireland before 1798 in, editor(s)Cathal Póitéir , The great Irish rebellion of 1798, Cork, Mercier Press, 1998, [Dickson D.]
The potato and Irish diet before the Great Famine in, editor(s)Cormac O Grada , Famine 150, Dublin, Teagasc, 1997, [Dickson D.]
The south Munster region in the 1790s in, , The French are in the Bay, Cork, Mercier, 1997, [Dickson D.]
The other great Irish famine in, editor(s)Cathal Poirteir , Arctic Ireland: The Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740-41, Belfast, White Row, 1997, [Dickson D.]
The other great Irish famine in, editor(s)Cathal Poirteir , The Great Irish Famine, Cork, Mercier, 1995, [Dickson D.]
Derry's backyard: The barony of Inishowen 1600-1850' in, editor(s)William Nolan, Liam Ronayne, Mairead Dunlevy] , Donegal:History and Society, Dublin, Geography Publications, 1995, [Dickson D.]
Paine and Ireland in, editor(s)David Dickson, Daire Keogh, Kevin Whelan , The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion, Dublin, Lilliput, 1993, [Dickson D.]
Butter comes to market: The origins of commercial dairying in County Cork in, editor(s)Patrick O'Flanagan, Neil Buttimer , Cork: History and society, Dublin, Geography Publications, 1993, [Dickson D.]
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
'Best of times, worst of time' in, editor(s)Djinn von Noorden , Malton's views of Dublin: The story of a Georgian city, Dublin, Martello Publishing, 2021, pp85 - 89, [David Dickson]
Foreword in, editor(s)C.J. Woods , Charles Abbot's tour through Ireland and North Wales in 1792, Dublin, Edmund Burke Publishers, 2019, ppvii - ix, [David Dickson]
'Foreword' in, editor(s)Young, Amy Mabel , 'Three hundred years in Innishowen, being... an account of the Young family of Culdaff, Dublin, Edmund Burke, 2018, ppv - ix, [David Dickson]
Research Expertise
Description
GENERAL INTERESTS: Social and economic history of Ireland; the history of Irish cities; Ireland and colonial Africa; the environmental history of Ireland and Scotland. CURRENT RESEARCH: 'The Moore project': the preparation of an annotated edition of the extensive correspondence of a middle-class Derry family between the 1790s and the 1840s, conducted with their siblings and relatives in Dublin, Baltimore and beyond. Sligo and its hinterland in the century 1760-1860.Projects
- Title
- The Moore Letters Project
- Summary
- This project, involving a team of five editors, has as its aim the publication of a critical edition of the 830 letters of the Moore family of Derry city between the 1790s and 1840s. This remarkable collection of correspondence of a middle-class family records the two-way exchanges between siblings and close relatives based in Derry, Dublin, Westport, Baltimore, and New York, and ranges over half a century. It is highly revealing of an intensely liberal Presbyterian culture that did not survive.
- Date From
- Dec. 2012
- Date To
- June 2023
- Title
- The Irish first cities
- Summary
- The first cities project drew on the stand-alone research of several urban historians and culminated in a monograph that compared the development of the ten principal Irish cities between the mid-seventeenth century and the 1820s. No general work on Irish urbanization spanning this pivotal period of growth had previously been attempted. The resulting monograph (Yale, 2021) places the appearance of the first Irish cities in a European and Atlantic context and explores architectural analogies, commercial connections and political singularity. The monograph also contrasts the dynamic growth of Irish cities in the eighteenth century with their relative stagnation (in population terms) in the century after 1825, and reflects on the cultural and political legacies of the preceding era. Spin-off projects on Derry and the Atlantic and on Sligo are currently being completed.
- Funding Agency
- n/a
- Date From
- 2015
- Date To
- 2019
Recognition
Representations
Governing Body, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2004-7 Governing Body, Marino Institute of Education, 2004-17 Council of the Royal Irish Academy 2015-16 Irish Manuscripts Commission 2009-17
Awards and Honours
Winner of the 2005 J. S. Donnelly sr. History Book Prize, American Conference for Irish Studies, for 'Old world colony: Cork and South Munster 1630-1830' . Elected to the Royal Irish Academy, 2006
Memberships
Royal Irish Academy; Economic and Social History Social of Ireland; Irish Historical Society; African Studies Association of Ireland