Olwen Purdue

Convenor, MA in Public History

HIS2011 Politics and Society in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

HIS2012 Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century Ireland

HIS3123 The Irish Country House and its Audiences

MHY7077 & MHY7091 Public History Internships

MHY7089  History and its Audiences

Dr Olwen Purdue specialises in the social and economic history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland. Her research focuses on poverty, welfare and public health in the industrial city - she is currently working on the history of child welfare under the Irish Poor Law, exploring how its systems and processes reponded to the challenges of the rapidly-growing city of Belfast, and how poor families engaged with and experienced these processes. She has also worked on the history of landed estates in the north of Ireland from the end of the Famine until the onset of the Northern Troubles

Dr Purdue is also actively engaged in research and teaching in Public History, something she has been instrumental in introducing to Queen's University. She is founder and Director of the Centre for Public History, and of the MA in Public History. She works closely with the cultural and heritage sectors across Northern Ireland in research, teaching and public engagement. She was specialist historical advisor for Titanic Belfast and a member of the advisory group for the Ulster Museum's Irish history exhibition and its Troubles and Beyond gallery. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Irish Museums Association.

Dr Purdue is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, member of the Royal Historical Society's Public History Prize panel and judge for the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland's Medical Humanities Award. She is international editor for the Public Historian journal and series editor of Liverpool University Press's Nineteenth-Century Ireland series. She is President of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland.