Dr Ciara Breathnach is Senior Lecturer in History at UL, and has published widely on Irish socio-economic, gender, cultural and health history. She is author of The Congested Districts Board of Ireland, 1891-1923, poverty and development in the West of Ireland (Dublin, 2005) and editor/co-editor of seven conference proceedings. Apart from chapters in edited volumes, she has published articles in Nursing History Review, Social History of Medicine, Gender & History, Urban History, Medical Humanities, Cultural and Social History, Medical History, Social History, Irish Historical Studies, Immigrants and Minorities, History of Family: an International Quarterly, the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Historical Research: the Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research and New Hibernia Review.

She has held visiting research and teaching fellowships at the IHR, London, NYU, U. Mass Boston, Harvard University, Glasgow Caledonian University and JNU, New Delhi. She sits on the Board of the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives Advisory Council and the Irish Manuscripts Commission, she is a former Heritage Council member (2012-2016). Breathnach has held several research awards as Principal or Co-Investigator and is currently an Irish Research Council Laureate Awards 2017/2018 recipient for a project entitled Death and Burial Data: Ireland 1864-1922 (2018-2022).

Publications

Ciara Breathnach, ‘The Triumph of Proximity: The Impact of District Nursing Schemes in 1890s’ Rural Ireland’, Nursing History Review 26 (2018): 68–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1891/1062-8061.26.68

Ciara Breathnach and Brian Gurrin,Maternal mortality, Dublin 1864-1905’, Social History of Medicine, 31:1 (2018):79–105 https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkx010 

Ciara Breathnach, Infant life protection and medico-legal literacy in early twentieth-century Dublin’, Women’s History Review, 26:6 (2017): 781-798. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2017.1307283

Ciara Breathnach and Brian Gurrin, ‘A tale of two cities – infant mortality and cause of infant death, Dublin, 1864–1910’, Urban History, 44:4 (2016): 647-677. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926816000717

Ciara Breathnach, ‘Handywomen and Birthing in Rural Ireland, 1851–1955’, Gender and History, 28:1 (2016): 36-56. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12176