PGT

Course Director, MA in Public History

MHY7089  History and its Audiences

MHY7091 Case Studies in Public History

UG

HIS3140 Belfast: Surviving the Victorian City

Professor 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

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 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.

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 2018-22, is a Director of the Irish Museum Association and a Governor of the Linen Hall Library. She also serves on the project board of a major redevelopment of the Ulster Museum's permanent galleries.