Browse the latest blog posts from the Dictionary of Irish Biography
In this month’s blog, Angela Byrne reflects on what the release of the 1926 census, recently digitised by the National Archives of Ireland, means to historians. On Sunday 18 April 1926 there was a westerly wind with localised showers, and a night-time ground frost. The clocks…
Irish emigrants to North America have thrived in a variety of ways since the seventeenth century, when they first started arriving there in numbers. They’ve made their mark in sport, politics, journalism, the arts and government, their lives and experiences ranging across the spectrum…
In this month’s blog, Patrick Maume explores the reception given to Guy du Maurier’s play, An Englishman’s home, when staged in Dublin in 1909. The driving forces of Irish history have never been limited to events on the island. The rise and fall of home rule…
With Irish actors, writers and filmmakers nominated across a variety of categories at this year's Academy awards, Eoin Kinsella digs into the DIB to look at some of our earliest Oscar nominees and winners. Over the past few weeks, Irish actress Jessie Buckley has been…
In the first of our blogs for 2026, UCC historian Dr Finola Doyle-O’Neill explores the early history of 2RN (later known as Radio Éireann), which began broadcasting 100 years ago this month. First…
For our midwinter blog, Terry Clavin considers the strangely muted response to the 1967 rediscovery of prehistoric Ireland’s most spectacular feat of engineering. …
Irish STEM lives was recently published by the Royal Irish Academy. Co-editor Turlough O’Riordan outlines the origins of the project, and how the publication came to fruition. Having long been fascinated by the history of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics…
To celebrate the forthcoming publication of her latest contribution to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, Angela Byrne looks at some of the notable lives shaped by the historic port and garrison town of…
In this month’s blog, based on a talk given at the 2025 Percy French Festival, Patrick Maume looks at the use of ballads and occasional verses as weapons of parody and tools for identity politics in the nineteenth century. In performance and in print, ballads and occasional verses…
In this month’s blog, part three in a series on the early years of the Defence Forces, Eoin Kinsella looks at how, 100 years ago, the Irish government set the tone of Ireland’s defence policy for the next century. The first two parts in the series are available…
