Drawing on her 2021 James Ford Lectures, Jane Ohlmeyer re-examines Ireland’s role in empire through the lens of early modernity. In this lecture she explores four interconnected themes. First, as England’s first colony, Ireland formed an integral part of the English imperial system. Second, as well as being colonized the Irish operated as active colonists in the English and other European empires. Third, the extent to which Ireland served as a laboratory for empire in India and the Atlantic world is analyzed. Finally, the impact empire had on the material and mental worlds of people living in early modern Ireland is examined alongside how these years are remembered today.

About the speaker:

Jane Ohlmeyer, MRIA, FTCD, FRHS, is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin. She was the founding Head of the School of Histories and Humanities and Trinity’s first Vice-President for Global Relations (2011-14). She was a driving force behind the 1641 Depositions Project and the development of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2015-20). Between 2015 and 2021, she chaired the Irish Research Council, an agency that funds frontier research across all disciplines. She is the PI for ‘Shape-ID: Shaping Interdisciplinary Practices in Europe’ and for ‘Human+’ a Marie Curie Cofund program that places the human at the center of technological innovation, both of which are funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program.

Professor Ohmeyer is the author or editor of numerous articles and 11 books, including being the editor of Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Ireland, published in 2018. She is currently working on a book that Oxford University Press will publish on ‘Ireland, empire and the early modern world’ which she gave as the 2021 James Ford Lectures in Oxford (these are available on the RTE website). She is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and of a number of editorial and scientific boards. She also served on the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institute’s international advisory board (2017- 2020). In 2021 she was a visiting fellow at Merton College, Oxford and she is currently a fellow at the Huntington Library in California.

Dr. Ohlmeyer will be introduced by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies in Columbia's Department of History and recent Heyman-Hub Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College, Dublin.