About this Event
Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society/An Cumann Éire San Ochtú Céad Déag
2026 Annual Conference
Queen’s University Belfast
11-12 June 2026
Thursday 11th June
10.45: Registration (PFC Foyer) Tea / Coffee
11.15-11.55 Welcome & Plenary Roundtable (PFC 2.18)
Africans in Ireland, 1578-1921: Documenting their Historic Presence, A Work in Progress
A panel discussion of Dr Bill Hart’s critical, decades-long archival work and the transition into a digital humanities project.
In person: William Hart (UU) and Nik Ribianszky (QUB)
On-line: Mark Doyle (Middle Tennessee State) and Jonathan Wright (Maynooth)
12.00-13.30 Parallel Sessions I
1a: Women’s writing (Chair: Sinéad Sturgeon, QUB) (PFC 2.13)
Sylvie Kleinman (TCD)
‘“I awoke crying in ecstasy: ‘I’m in Belfast!” Political exile, public fame, private affective spheres. Relocating Matilda Tone in context (ca 1785-1849)’
Sonja Lawrenson (Manchester Met)
‘“Incapable of Translation:” Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent as Transfiction’
Amy Prendergast (TCD)
‘Climate, race, and mental health in the memoirs of Elizabeth Digby Pilot (1742–1826)’
1b Army connections (Chair: S.J. Connolly, QUB) (PFC 2.11)
Conor Caldwell (UL)
Tunes: military and traditional Irish (tbc)
James K. Wright (Carleton)
‘The Evatt Collection: The Irish Rebellion of 1798 and Music of the Irish Gothic’
Charles Ivar McGrath (UCD)
‘Soldiers on the move in Ireland and abroad, 1691-1815’
13.30–14.15 Lunch (PFC Foyer)
14.15-15.45 Parallel Sessions 2
2a 1790s (Chair: Peter Gray, QUB) (PFC 2.13)
Helen Dallas (Galway)
‘Theatre in Revolutionary Contexts: two Earl of Essex plays in London and Dublin’
Maria Zukovs (St Andrews)
‘“The present alarmed state of the Country”: News, Government Correspondence and the 1796 French Invasion of Ireland’
Lucy Cogan (UCD)
‘Good British Ale or Bad Irish Whiskey: Ulster Labouring Class Poets and the 1798 Rebellion’
2b Economics, hierarchies and education (Chair: Margaret Kelleher, UCD) (PFC 2.11)
Andrea Katrina Byrne (Maynooth)
‘Novelising Servitude: Discourses and Depictions of Domestic Servants in Eighteenth Century Literature’
Jessica White (UCC)
‘Economies of Intimacy in Maria Edgeworth’s Juvenile Fiction’
Siobhán Dowling Long (UCC)
‘The Early Charity-School Movement in Ireland: Qualifications, Rules and Orders to be Observed by Charity-School Masters (1716–1730)’
15.45-16.15 Tea / Coffee
16.15-17.45 Parallel Sessions 3
3a Ireland and Scotland (Chair: Frank Ferguson, UU) (PFC 2.13)
Scott Macfie (Glasgow)
‘Sweetening the Soil: Liming in the Irish and Scottish Agricultural Revolutions, 1750-1815’
Gillian Dooley (Flinders)
‘Jane Austen, “Scotch airs” and “Irish melodies”’
Alan Millar (UU)
‘Rev. James Glass A.M.: The Mercury’s Mercurial Makar’
3b Religion (Chair: Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, DCU) (PFC 2.11)
Andrew Sneddon (UU)
‘Prophecy, “Toleration” and Missioning: The “French Prophets” in early eighteenth-century Ireland’
Robert O’Byrne (TCD)
‘Horticultural Hierarchy: Eighteenth Century Church of Ireland Bishops and their Gardens’
Moyra Haslett (QUB)
‘Dissenting connections: Olivia Elder and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Antrim and Warrington’
18.00-19.00
Plenary (PFC 2.18)
Leonie Hannan (QUB)
‘The Labour of Home: Cultivating, sustaining and experimenting in the eighteenth century’
(Chair: Patrick Walsh, TCD)
19.15-20.00
Wine reception in the Seamus Heaney Centre
Sponsored by the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen’s
PGR Bursary announcement
20.00 Conference Dinner
Holohan’s Pantry
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Queen's University Belfast, University Road, Belfast, United Kingdom
EUR 17.50 to EUR 60.00
