Course Director, MA in Public History

HIS3140 Belfast: Surviving the Victorian City

Professor Olwen Purdue specialises in the social history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland with a particular focus on power, agency and social class, particularly in urban contexts. She has written a 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 examining the engagement between middle-class welfare administrators and those families who ended up in the welfare system. She is currently examining the emigration of unaccompanied Irish children to Britain's settler colonies.  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

Professor 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 and internationally in research, teaching and public engagement. She was specialist historical advisor for Titanic Belfast, a member of the advisory group for the Ulster Museum's Irish history exhibition and its Troubles and Beyond gallery and was historical advisor to Channel 4's 'Britain's Most Historic Towns' series.

Professor Purdue is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was elected to the Society's Council in 2022. She was President of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland and a Director of the Irish Museum Association from 2018-22.