Biography
I am an Irish historian focused largely on social history, in particular the history of suicide, death and poverty in nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland.
I am also interested in the history of institutions, including workhouses, psychiatric hospitals, prisons and Magdalen asylums and teach a course on the public history of institutions of confinement.
Before coming to Trinity College I worked at Queen's University in Belfast and Oxford Brookes University on two research projects related to the history of the Irish Poor Law. Prior to that I worked at the University of Limerick on a project exploring the medicalisation of maternity through general and psychiatric hospital records in early 20th century Ireland. I received my Ph.D. from NUI Maynooth in 2005.
Part of my job involves working with the Glasnevin Trust at Glasnevin Cemetery and Museum developing their public history, education and research activities.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Olwen Purdue and Georgina Laragy, Poverty, Children and the Poor Law in Industrial Belfast, 1880-1918, First, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2024
`Items in the sum of that great calamity": suicide in Dublin during the Great Famine in, editor(s)Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Ciaran McCabe, Ciaran Reilly , Dublin and the Great Irish Famine, Dublin, UCD Press, 2022, pp000 - 000, [Laragy, G.]
Locating investigations into suicidal death in urban Ireland, 1901-1915 in, editor(s)Laragy, G., Purdue, O., & Wright, J.J. , Urban Spaces in Nineteenth Century Ireland, Liverpool, LIverpool University Press, 2018, pp154 - 171, [Laragy, G]
Laragy, G., Purdue, O. & Wright, J.J. , Urban Spaces in nineteenth century Ireland, First, Liverpool, LIverpool University Press, 2018, 1 - 224pp
Laragy, Georgina, "For those whose benefit these burdens must be taken": children, employment and training in Northern Ireland, 1921-1939, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 9, (2), 2016, p277 - 293
Laragy, G, 'A peculiar species of felony': suicide, medicine and the law in Victorian Britain and Ireland', Journal of Social History , 46, (3), 2013, p732 - 743
'Narratives of poverty among Irish suicides between the Great Famine and the First World War' in, editor(s)Andreas Gestrich, Elizabeth Hurren, Steven King , Poverty and sickness in modern Europe: narratives of the sick poor, 1780-1938, London, Continuum, 2012, pp143-160 , [Laragy, G]
Poor relief in the south of Ireland, 1850-1921 in, editor(s)Virginia Crossman, Peter Gray , Poverty and welfare in Ireland, 1838-1948, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2011, pp53-66 , [Laragy, G]
Sources for the history of the Irish poor law in the post-Famine period in, editor(s)Ciara Breathnach, Catherine Lawless , Visual, material and print culture in nineteenth-century Ireland, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2010, pp198-209 , [Laragy, G; Lucey, D.S.; Purdue, O; Crossman, V. ]
Suicide and insanity in post-Famine Ireland in, editor(s)Catherine Cox, Maria Luddy , Cultures of care in Irish medical history, 1750-1950, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp79-91 , [Laragy, G]
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Georgina Laragy, ''We had a very touching little service': burying and remembering suicides in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries., Department of History Postgraduate Research Seminar, Maynooth University, 24/11/2024, 2024
Georgina Laragy, Suicide in Ireland during the Great Famine (1845-52), Rippling effects of the Great Irish Famine, Online, 7 March, 2023, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council
'The Mother and Baby Home Report, 2021' in, editor(s)Salvador Ryan , Birth and the Irish: a miscellany, Dublin, Wordwell, 2021, pp370 - 377, [Laragy, G.]
Laragy, G. , Review of Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster, by Guy Beiner , Times Higher Education Supplement, 2019
History Ireland: Ireland after the Rising: Changed Utterly, 1916-1918' , Special Volume, (2017), 1 - 92p, Laragy, G., GIbney, J. & Graham, T., [eds.], 6 months
Laragy, G. , Keynote Address: ''One part of a very large jigsaw puzzle': workhouses, coercive confinement and public history in modern Ireland, Inaugural Graduate Studies Conference, Centre for Irish Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 24 March , 2017, Centre for Irish Studies Graduate Studies Committee
Laragy, G., & O'Neill, C. , . 'Shared/Sharing Authority' with Ciaran O'Neill, Public Humanities Workshop, , Public Humanities Workshop, Trinity Long Room Hub, May 2017, 2017
The city morgue in Cork and Dublin in, editor(s)Ryan, Salvador , Death and the Irish: a miscellany, Dublin, Wordwell Books, 2016, [Laragyg, G. ]
'The suicides of Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald (1864) and Lord Waterford (1895)' in, editor(s)Ryan, Salvador , Death and the Irish: a miscellany, Dublin, Wordwell Books, 2016, [Laragy, G.]
Identifying the poor of Cavan, 1838-1911 in, editor(s)Jonathan Cherry and Brendan Scott , Cavan history and society : interdisciplinary essays on the history of an Irish county, Dublin, Geography Publications, 2014, pp427-445 , [Laragy, G]
Laragy, G, 'A "hollow and unsubstantial" prosperity: poverty in nineteenth century Meath', Riocht na Mide, 24, 2013, p217-234
The Cavan Workhouse, 1842-1922 in, editor(s)Brendan Scott , Cavan Town, 1610-2010: a brief history , Cavan, Cavan County Council, 2012, pp50-61 , [Laragy, G]
Laragy, G, Murder in Cavan, 1809-1891, Breifne: Journal of Cumann Seanchais Bhréifne, 11, (44), 2008, p611-630
Research Expertise
Recognition
Awards and Honours
IRCHSS PhD Postgraduate Studentship