About me
Bio | In 2018, I completed my Irish Research Council-funded PhD thesis “‘We here in Ireland are not outside this struggle”: the Irish Catholic Church, anti-communism and the Cold War, 1945-1965' at the National University of Ireland, Galway, passing my viva with typographical corrections in February 2018. My PhD thesis seeks to increase understanding of the politics and society of mid-twentieth century Ireland by exploring the conflict's impact on the Irish Catholic Church. More broadly, I am interested in 19th and 20th century Irish political, social and cultural history, particularly in its transnational aspects. |
Areas of expertise | Nineteenth and twentieth-century Irish political, social and cultural history. Histories of religion in late modern Ireland, Ireland in transnational perspective, Cold War history, working class history, histories of left and labour movements, Northern Ireland. |
Keywords | Modern Irish history; Irish Catholicism; Irish religious history; Anti-communism; Irish labour history; Transnational history; Working class history; Social movements; Irish radical politics. |
Member Details
Full Name | Gerard Madden (Professional Historian) |
Membership Type | Professional Historian |
Experience
Employment | 2013-2014 News editor, Scoláire Staire. Until its closure, I was news editor of a free digital online Irish history magazine, Scoláire Staire, edited by Dr. Adrian Grant (University of Ulster). I collaborated with an editorial team of history postgraduates and postdocs from across Ireland in creating each issue. |
Management & Administrative experience | I have organised and co-organised several conferences and seminars held by the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class (ICHLC), on whose committee I serve, in Galway. In addition, I have also promoted other events held by the organisation through the group’s Facebook and Twitter pages and by assisting in designing and putting up posters. Examples of my involvement include: |
Outreach activities | Papers presented: ‘The Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1958-1963’, Cold War Home Fronts: Comparative Approaches conference, University of Sheffield, 27 January 2018. ‘“Oh Jesus, not another bloody encyclical”: Dublin’s Catholic Workers’ College, 1951-1966’, New Perspectives on Catholic Archives seminar, Franciscan Friary, Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, 6 May 2017. ‘From Howth to Warsaw: The Rev. Canon Harry Armstrong’s 1950 journey to communist Poland’, Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies annual conference, NUI Galway, 5 May 2017. ‘Women’s activism and Irish Catholic anti-communism during the Cold War: the case of the Irish Housewives’ Association’, Women’s History Association of Ireland annual conference, NUI Galway, 22 April 2017. ‘Irish Catholic anti-communism, the Cold War, and the Irish Housewives’ Association’, Irish History Students’ Association annual conference, Trinity College Dublin, 25 February 2017. Sibéal 'Revolutionary Genders' conference, ‘Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin, anti-communism, and the Irish Housewives Association’, NUI Galway, 19 November 2016. 1916: Home: 2016 conference, NUI Galway, ‘Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin, anti-communism, and the Irish Housewives Association’, 7 October 2016. Transnational Ireland, Transnationalism in Practice workshop, Maynooth University, 12 September, 2016. Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions, “Monitoring suspected ‘revolutionaries’: John Charles McQuaid and the Marine, Port and General Workers’ Union”, University College Cork, 17 June, 2016. Spanish Association for Irish Studies Annual Conference, “Monitoring suspected ‘revolutionaries’: John Charles McQuaid and the Marine, Port and General Workers’ Union”, University of Zaragoza, 26 May 2016. Aspects of anti-communism in 20th Century Ireland, ‘Catholic anti-communism and the Irish in post-war Britain’, NUI Galway, 14 April, 2016. Irish History Students’ Association Conference, ‘Catholic anti-communism, the Cold War, and peace and nuclear disarmament campaigns in Ireland’, NUI Galway, 20 February, 2016. Remembering Noël Browne, 1915-97: Reflections on Radicalism Welfare & Social Change in Modern Ireland, ‘Catholic anti-communism, the Cold War, and peace and nuclear disarmament campaigns in Ireland, 1945-1968’, NUI Galway, 13-14 November, 2015. 'The National Union of Journalists and Catholic Anti-Communism in mid-Twentieth Century Ireland', to the Irish History Students' Association Conference, Jim Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, 14 March 2015. 'The National union of Journalists and Catholic Anti-Communism in mid-Twentieth Century Ireland', to the Irish Centre for the histories of Labour and Class's 'Labour & Society in 20th century Ireland' workshop, Hardiman Building, NUI Galway, 27 January 2015. 'Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and anti-communism in mid-twentieth century Ireland', to the Political Studies Association of Ireland Annual Conference, Galway Bay Hotel, Galway, 18 October 2014. ‘Catholic anti-communism in mid-twentieth century Galway, 1931-1949’, to the ‘Outsiders in independent Ireland, 1922-1949’ conference, Iontas Building, Maynooth University, 5 September 2014. 'Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and anti-communism in mid-twentieth century Ireland', to the NUI Galway History Graduate Seminar Series, Moore Institute, 5 February 2014. 'Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and anti-communism, 1937-1976', to the inaugural conference of the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class, NUI Galway, 21 November 2013. |
Committees & Associations | 2016- Member of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions. |
Awards | October 2014-September 2017 Recipient of a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, awarded by the Irish Research Council, 16,000 euro per annum. |
Other activities | I am a regular participant in the annual Culture Night talks organised by Dr. John Cunningham and Dr. Sarah-Anne Buckley in Galway City Museum. My talk at the 2016 event, which was based on a memoir by a Presbyterian and native of Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, Frances Moffett, was recently published in Growing up in Galway: histories and memories (Eva Books, 2017). |
Publications
Peer Reviewed Journals | ‘Responses in the west of Ireland to political change in Northern Ireland, 1968-1972’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 41, no. 159, May 2017. ‘Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and anti-communism, 1937-1976’, Saothar, journal of the Irish Labour History Society, no. 39, 2014. |
Other Journals | McCarthyism, Catholicism and Ireland’, History Ireland, vol. 25, no. 23, May/June 2017. |
Published reports | ‘Conference report: Class, conflict and culture, National University of Ireland, Galway, 21/22 November 2013’ co-written with Dr. David Convery, History Workshop Journal, no. 78, Autumn 2014. |
Electronic Publications | Blogposts ‘Catholic anti-communism from a four nations history perspective’, Four Nations History Network, 21 March 2016, ‘Archive of Connolly Association’s Irish Democrat now online’, Hatful of History, 27 August 2015, |
Reviews | Dr. Seán Byers, ‘Seán Murray, Marxist-Leninist and Irish socialist republican’, Socialist History, no. 49, Spring 2016. Dr. F. X. Martin (ed.), ‘The Howth gun-running and the Kilcoole gun-running: recollections and documents’, The Irish Story, October 2014, http://www.theirishstory.com/2014/10/08/book-review-the-howth-gun-running-and-the-kilcoole-gun-running-recollections-and-documents/#.WjJ5BN9l_cs Dr. David Convery (ed.), ‘Locked Out: a century of Irish working class life’, Scoláire Staire, vol. 3, no. 4, October 2013, Paul Daly, Rónán O’Brien and Dr. Paul Rouse (eds.), ‘Making the difference: the Irish Labour Party 1912-2012’, Saothar, journal of the Irish Labour History Society, no. 38, 2013. Cormac K. H. O’Malley and Cormac Ó Comhraí (eds.), ‘The men will talk to me: Galway interviews by Ernie O'Malley’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. 65, 2013. |
Other | ‘A Protestant childhood in Ballinasloe’, Dr. John Cunningham and Dr. Sarah-Anne Buckley (eds.), Growing up in Galway: histories and memories (Eva Books, 2017). ‘The Fr. Denis Fahey papers’, Glowing Embers, newsletter of the Irish Spiritan Archives, no. 2, May 2016. |