Digital Humanities: 'Records, Research and Resources: Insights into the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland'

Dr Ciarán Wallace will introduce the project and three members of the VRTI team will take us behind the scenes of this landmark project, that seeks to recreate the archive lost on June 30th, 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War: - Jessica Baldwin (Senior Conservator, National Archives): ‘1922 Salved Records’ - Timothy Murtagh (VRTI Researcher Fellow, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland) ‘From Rebellion to Union: The  Home Office and Ireland, 1793–1803’ - Brian Gurrin (Census Specialist, VRTI): ‘What’s in a Name?’ Organised as part of the Trinity Arts & Humanities Research Festival 2023. Speakers:

Dr Ciarán Wallace
Deputy Director of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland Ciarán completed his PhD on Dublin’s pre-independence municipal politics at Trinity College Dublin (2010), where he subsequently held a Government of Ireland Post-doctoral Fellowship. He was a co-designer of Trinity’s inaugural Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) ‘Irish Lives in War and Rebellion: 1912-1923’. He has worked on significant Digital Humanities projects including the EU-funded CULTURA consortium, the 1641 Depositions Project and the Down Survey Project.

Having lectured in Modern Irish History at Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University and Liverpool John Moore’s University Ciarán returned to Dublin to take up a post in the initial scoping phase for Beyond 2022| the Virtual Treasury (VRTI). He currently lectures on historians in the archives on the Public History and Cultural Heritage MPhil programme in Trinity. Ciarán’s role includes coordinating the Virtual Treasury’s public engagement activities.

Ciarán has published on urban and social history, Irish political cartoons, and online learning; a number of articles on archival history are forthcoming in 2023-4.

Jessica Baldwin Senior Conservator, National Archives, Ireland Jessica trained as a conservator in London before moving to Ireland in 1995 and working as the paper conservator at Trinity College Library, Dublin for eight years. In 2003, she was appointed as the Chester Beatty’s first full-time conservator tasked with establishing the Conservation Department, which has become an integral and vital part of the museum. In 2014 she joined the senior management team as Head of Collections and Conservation, responsible for the strategic management of the Collections, including exhibitions, education, conservation and research.

A three-year career break in 2019 allowed her to successfully complete the MA in Museum Practice and Management at Ulster University. She also worked as a project conservator at the National Archives Ireland (NAI) on the collections salvaged following the destruction of the Public Record Office in 1922, before being appointed Senior Conservator in October 2022. She has lectured extensively in collection care and is an accredited member of the Institute of Conservator-Restorers in Ireland (ICRI).

Dr Timothy Murtagh VRTI Archival Research Fellow at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Tim Murtagh completed his PhD heer in TCD in 2015, and was subsequently a historical consultant to the 14 Henrietta Street Museum.

He is the author of Irish Artisans and Radical Politics, 1776-1820, which is based on his doctoral thesis. Since 2020 he has been a research fellow with the Virtual Record Treasury, based in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

In the current phase of the Virtual Treasury, Tim is the primary researcher on the research strand concerning the reconstruction of the records of the Irish Chief Secretary's Office c.1760-1830'.

Dr Brian Gurrin VRTI Research Fellow in Census and Population Records Dr Brian Gurrin is the census and population specialist on the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland Project. He has written extensively on census taking in Ireland and is especially interested in regional population changes in the pre-Famine period. He has lectured on themes relating to Irish population change at the University of Limerick and Maynooth University. His areas of research include Irish religious demographics, and his co- authored volume (with Professors Kerby Miller and Liam Kennedy), The Irish religious censuses of the 1760s, was published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2022. His joint authored volume (with Liam Kennedy, Donald MacRaild and Lewis Darwen), The Death Census of Black ’47: eyewitness accounts of Ireland’s Great Famine, was published earlier this year. He is currently examining the surviving statistics from the census of Ireland, 1813-15, with a view to rehabilitating this problematic census among historical researchers.

The Modern and Contemporary Irish History Seminar Series will take place at 2.30p.m. on Wednesday in the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute. It provides a forum for discussion and dissemination of new ideas, perspectives, and research on Irish history, Irish Studies and cognate disciplines. All are welcome. We particularly welcome members of the postgraduate community.

Convenors: Dr Carole Holohan, Dr Ciaran O'Neill, Dr Georgina Laragy, Prof Lindsey Earner-Byrne