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Roisin Higgins Reader - Research, School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Law T: 01642 384039E: r.higgins@tees.ac.uk Research: Social Sciences, Humanities & Law research
Dr Roisín Higgins did her PhD at the University of St Andrews and has lectured at universities in Ireland, England and Scotland. She has been at Teesside since 2013.
Roisín’s work focuses on social and cultural history with particular interest in the politics of historical memory. Her book, Transforming 1916: meaning, memory and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising, won the prestigious ACIS James S. Donnelly Sr Prize for the best book in History and Social Science. Roisín was involved in many aspects of the Centenary of the Easter Rising, including acting as historical consultant on the ‘Commemoration’ zone of the permanent exhibition GPO: Witness History. During 2016 she was invited to deliver keynote lectures in Australia, America and Europe, as well as to give numerous public lectures in Ireland and Britain.
Roisín is leader of the public history project ‘Dear Mrs Pennyman’, funded by the Heritage Lottery. Inspired by letters found in Ormesby Hall in Middlesbrough, the project is carrying out research into the lives of women who wrote to Mary Pennyman in her capacity as Secretary of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Widows and Orphans Fund. Volunteer researchers have found stories of women’s hardship and resilience in the years after the First World War. You can find out more about the project at www.dearmrspennyman.com.
Roisín is one of the curators for National Treasures, a public history project being run in association with RTÉ, the National Museum of Ireland and the Irish Broadcasting Authority. A television series will be broadcast in Spring 2018 to coincide with the National Treasures exhibition at the Museum of Folklife, Castlebar. Roisín is a Director of the Irish Association of Professional Historians: www.iaph.ie
Roisín is interested in the relationship between past and present, particularly during significant historical anniversaries.
Roisín welcomes potential PhD enquiries from students interested in the social and cultural history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland and Britain. Projects on memory and commemoration are particularly welcome.
Current PhD supervisions:
Seán Donnelly, ‘Imperial Discourses and Cumann na nGaedheal in the 1920s’.
Timothy Ellis, ‘Visual Culture and State Formation in Ireland, 1922-39’.
Peter McInhinney, ‘Recovery of Ulster’s Gaelic Material Heritage as a Resource for Contemporary Cultural Expression’, AHRC Heritage Consortium. (second supervisor).
Books:
Transforming 1916: meaning, memory and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising (Cork: Cork University Press, 2012)
Winner of the ACIS James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences
Places We Play:Ireland’s Sporting Heritage, with Mike Cronin(Cork: The Collins Press, 2011)
The Life and After-Life of P.H.Pearse/ Pádraic Mac Piarais: Saol agus Oidhreacht (eds.) with Regina Uí Chollatáin, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009)
Book Chapters:
'Commemoration and the Irish Revolution' in J. Crowley et al., Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 2017).
‘”The Irish Republic was proclaimed by poster”: The politics of commemorating the Easter Rising’, in R. Grayson and F. McGarry (eds.), Remembering 1916 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp.43-61.
‘The Nation Reading Rooms’ in J. H. Murphy (ed.), The Oxford History of the Irish Book,Vol. IV: The Irish Book in English 1800-1891 (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp 262-273.
‘The changing fortunes of national myths: commemorating Anzac Day and the Easter Rising,’ in K. Holmes and S. Ward (eds.), Exhuming Passions: the pressure of the past in Ireland and Australia (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011),pp 145-162. (Also published by University of Western Australia Publishing).
‘Introduction’in R. Higgins and R. Uí Chollatáin (eds.), The Life and After-Life of P.H. Pearse: Pádraic Mac Piarais: Saol agus Oidhreacht (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), ppxvii-xxx.
‘Remembering and Forgetting P.H.Pearse’ in: R.Higgins and R. Uí Chollatáin (eds.) The Life and After-Life of P.H. Pearse: Pádraic Mac Piarais: Saol agus Oidhreacht (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), pp 123-38.
'Sites of Memory and Memorial' in M.E. Daly and M O'Callaghan (eds.), 1916 in 1966: commemorating the Easter Rising (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2007), pp. 272-302.
'I am the narrator over and above...the caller up of the dead: pageant and drama in 1966' in M.E. Daly and M O'Callaghan (eds.), 1916 in 1966: commemorating the Easter Rising (Dublin:Royal Irish Academy, 2007), pp 148-172.
'The Constant Reality Running through our Lives: Commemorating Easter 1916' in P. Crotty, L. Harte and Y. Whelan (eds.), Ireland: Space, Text, Time (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2005),pp 45-56.
'Creating New Forms: Civil Society in Northern Ireland' in R. J. Morris and L. Kennedy (eds.), Order and Dis-order: Ireland and Scotland, 1500-2000 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005), pp 101-112.
Journal Articles:
“The ‘incorruptible inheritors of 1916’”: the battle for ownership of the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising’ in Saothar: The Journal of Irish Labour History (Summer, 2016), pp.33-44.
The hall mark of pluperfect respectability’: the early development of golf in Irish society, ‘Éire Ireland, Spring /Summer (48:1/2) 2013, pp 15-31.
'Projections and Reflections: Irishness and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising', Eire-Ireland,Autumn/Winter (42: 3/4), 2007, pp 11-34.
'Review Essay: A Drift of Chosen Females: The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vols. 4 and 5'. Irish University Review, Autumn/Winter (33: 2), 2003, pp 400-6.
Other Publications:
‘Remembering the Rising’: in 1916: Weaving Private and Public Narratives: the online exhibition curated by the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI).
A Nation’s Voice, Arts Council of Ireland, 2016.
‘The Past is a Political Minefield: public memory, politicians and historians’, Museum Ireland, vol. 24 (2015), pp.13-18.
'Buildings for sports and sports fields', in R. Loeber and H. Campbell, (eds.), Art and Architecture in Ireland, Vol IV (Yale University Press,2014).
‘Carlow’s Sporting Heritage’ Carloviana: Carlow Historical and Archaeological Society, (Number 59), 2010, pp 7-8.
‘The Irish Sporting Heritage Project’, History Ireland, (17:6), Nov/Dec, 2009,pp 8-9.
‘Sporting Heritage’, Heritage Outlook: the magazine of the Heritage Council, Winter 2009/ Spring 2010, pp 62-63.
‘William Robertson Nicoll’, Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism. The British Library, Academia Press of Ghent, and ProQuest, 2007.
'1966 and all that: the fiftieth anniversary commemoration' with C. Holohan and C. O’Donnell, History Ireland, March/April, 2006, pp 31-6.
Programme notes and glossary for production of G.B. Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island, Lyric Theatre, Belfast, 2004.
No Place Like Home,(ed.), (Belfast: Tinderbox, 2001)
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