Abstract
This thesis is an examination of the architecture of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, and how they have interacted with Irish society over time.These institutions, infamous in recent years as sites of involuntary confinement, and coerced, unpaid labour by thousands of women for the ‘crime’ (or perception) of sexual deviancy in a highly religious culture, have not previously had a significant footprint in the academic literature. This work therefore represents a significant contribution to contemporary understandings of these institutions and how they operated, not only because it seeks to address the gap in the literature on both Irish institutional architecture and the Magdalene Laundries in general, but also because, in order to generate this research, the present study has uncovered and made use of a wide variety of hitherto untapped source material. The uncovering of new sources is particularly significant in the Magdalene context due to the sealing of the private archives of the religious orders to academic researchers rendering many traditional lines of scholarly inquiry in this field non-viable, or at least, much more difficult than might be hoped.
Due to the inability to access many ‘traditional’ sources, and the fragmentary and multi-media nature of those which remain accessible, this study has adopted a mixed methods approach, tailoring the particular method used in any given chapter of the study to the main source material being relied upon. A particularly novelty of this research is the use of digitally situated interviews with survivors of the laundries, whereby 3D reconstructions of former laundry sites were used as memory prompts and discussion tools at interview.
| Date of Award | Jul 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Sponsors | Northern Ireland Department for the Economy |
| Supervisor | Chantelle Niblock (Supervisor) & Colm Donnelly (Supervisor) |
Keywords
- Magdalene
- laundry
- architecture
- 3D modelling
- 3D reconstruction