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Dr Kennedy will talk about her new book, (Oxford UP, 2025).

The late-18th-century ‘age of revolutions’ has long been identified as a key moment in the gendering of modern democratic politics, opening up new debates on the ‘rights of women’ while often re-affirming the masculinity of the political citizen. In Ireland, it saw the rise of the United Irish movement, mass popular mobilisation, reaching a violent dénouement in the 1798 rebellion. But what did Ireland's age of revolution mean for women? Was radical republicanism able to imagine women as political actors? How did Irish women experience and navigate the ideological conflicts of the 1790s? This is the first book-length study of women and Irish politics in the late 18th century, stressing women's concerns, initiatives, and networks. It reconstructs the distinctively gendered political cultures of Ireland's principal communities and asks how these shaped the meanings of the 1790s for women. It reveals a complexly gendered public sphere in which women were often active participants, and suggests how our understanding of revolution might change when viewed from their perspective.

Dr Catriona Kennedy is a Reader in Modern British and Irish history at the University of York. She is a specialist in the long 18th century with a particular emphasis on gender, radicalism, confessional relations, and warfare. Her previous publications include Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: military and civilian experience in Britain and Ireland, 1793-1815 (2013), and the co-edited Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1850. Men of arms (2012). She is currently working on her third monograph Master and servant in eighteenth-century Ireland, the initial research for which was funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship award in 2020-1.

This seminar will be available in hybrid form, in-person and online via Teams.

This event is hosted jointly with the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies