About this Event
This live interview will feature the story of Catherine Strong, Dublin’s official city “scavenger” tasked with running sanitation teams to clear the streets of human and animal waste.
Audiences will hear how over four centuries ago Catherine Strong earned her money through levies on shopkeepers and traders but when the dung began to pile up and the stench spread across the city, her career in public service ended. Professor Jane Ohlmeyer will tell the audience how things went spectacularly wrong for Catherine but how she in turn profited by setting herself up subsequently as a moneylender.
During her interview, Professor Ohlmeyer will tell Near FM presenter Ciaran Murray about the Dublin of the time, but also show how Catherine’s story, like many other women, became largely absent from history. She will speak about why she is trying to recover the voices of ordinary, non-elite women in early modern Ireland and why that’s the focus of her new European-funded project VOICES: Life and Death, War and Peace, c.1550-c.1700: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland.
Jane Ohlmeyer, MRIA, FBA, FTCD, FRHistS, is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin. She was a driving force behind the 1641 Depositions Project and the development of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute. Jane chaired the Irish Research Council (2015-21). In 2023, she received an Advanced ERC for VOICES, a project on the lived experiences of women in early modern Ireland.
Jane is the author or editor of numerous articles and 14 books. Her latest, Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World (Oxford, 2023), is based on the 2021 Ford Lectures in Oxford. In 2023 she was awarded the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Humanities. She is currently working with Briona Ni Dhiarmada on a book called From that Small Island. The Story of the Irish which is based on a 4-part documentary and a feature of the same name.
This talk will be subsequently broadcast on Near FM. You can listen to Near FM online www.nearfm.ie/livestream or on 90.3FM.
Performances by An Góilín Traditional Singing Club.
These events and subsequent radio series are supported by Coimisiún na Meán with the Television licence fee.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Trinity Long Room Hub, Fellow Square, Dublin 2, Ireland
EUR 0.00
