Abstract
1. The officers of the Society during 2017 were James Kelly (president); Maura Cronin (treasurer); Juliana Adelman (secretary); Chris Colvin (web editor); Catherine Cox and Graham Brownlow (editors); Matthew Stout (book reviews/newsletter editor); Rebecca Stuart, Jonathan Wright, Ella Kavanagh, Niall Ó Cíosáin, Olwen Purdue and Laura Kelly (committee members); and Catherine Cox (representative on Irish Committee for Historical Sciences).
At the AGM held 17 November 2017 at the Central Bank, Ella Kavanagh was nominated to serve as treasurer and duly elected. The Society sincerely thanks Maura Cronin for 17 years of service as treasurer. The committee and officers for 2018 will be as above with the exception of treasurer. The Society seeks members interested in the roles of book reviews/newsletter editor and secretary.
2. Journal. The journal has been published by SAGE since 2015 and this relationship has been satisfactory. We continue to remind members to check that their library has subscribed to the electronic archive of the journal available on JSTOR as it is not part of the ‘Irish Studies’ collection. Many articles are already available online through SAGE OnlineFirst. The journal’s profile continues to improve in the journal ranking systems for both History and Economics.
3. Thanks are extended to Rebecca Stuart for organising the 2017 annual conference, which was held at the Central Bank in Dublin on the 16 and 17 November. The Connell Lecture was delivered by Professor Kevin O’Rourke, University of Oxford.
The following papers were presented: THURSDAY: Nineteenth century Irish artisans, protectionism and definitions of nationalism, John McGrath, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick; ‘Masters of Our Own House’: Cumann na nGaedheal and the Shaping of Free State Identity, 1921–24, Sean Donnelly, Teesside University; Irish schools, contemporary history and the teaching of nationality: What was ‘nation’ in the Irish national narratives, 1850–1905?, Henrik Forsberg, University of Helsinki; Occupational structure in Ireland in the 19th century: data sources and avenues of exploration, Jason Begley, Coventry University, Frank Geary, Belfast and Tom Stark, Portstewart; ‘Till Debt Do Us Part’ – Financial Implications of the Divorce of the Irish Free State from the UK, 1922–6, John Fitzgerald, Trinity College Dublin and Sean Kenny, Lund University; Reassessing costs and standards of living in Ireland since independence: the impact of an accurate measure of housing cost, Ronan Lyons, Trinity College Dublin; Truly Muscular Gaels: Physical Culture and Irish Masculinity, Conor Heffernan, University College Dublin; The man who married a mountain and other stories, Declan O’Keeffe, Clongowes Wood College; Common-pool resource governance and uneven food security: regional resilience during the Great Irish Famine, 1845–52, Eoin Flaherty, University College Dublin; and Scarring and Selection in the Great Irish Famine, Matthias Blum, Queen’s University Belfast, Christopher L. Colvin, Queen’s University Belfast and Eoin McLaughlin, St Andrews University. FRIDAY: The Ancient Order of Hibernians in the US and Ireland: a transnational exploration of Irish identity and upward social mobility, Kerron Ó Luain, University College Dublin; The oilmen cometh: Irish-America assesses business prospects in the Free State, 1922–3, Ian d’Alton, Trinity College Dublin; The Workman family of 19th-century Belfast: A study of a middle-class elite, Alice Johnson, Queen’s University Belfast; Representation of the people: franchise extension and the ‘Sinn Féin Election’ in Ireland, 1918, Alan de Bromhead, Queen’s University Belfast, Alan Fernihough, Queen’s University Belfast and Enda Hargaden, University of Tennessee; The Pull of the Wirtschaftswunder, 1954–63, Mervyn O’Driscoll, University College Cork; The Industrial Credit Company: Its Genesis and Early Years, John King, independent; An Outward Turn: The Quest for Economic Democracy in Ireland in the 1930s, Gordon Michael Robert Warren, University College Cork; Competition between organisational forms in Danish and Irish dairying around the turn of the twentieth century, Eoin McLaughlin, St Andrews University and Paul Sharp, University of Southern Denmark; Economic Development and the Origins of Cooperative Institutions: Evidence From The German Periphery, Marvin Suesse, Trinity College Dublin and Nikolaus Wolf, Humboldt University of Berlin; ‘The woman does not give as good a return of work as the man’: women, work and the marriage bar in Ireland, c. 1924–73, Deirdre Foley, Dublin City University; Globalizing the History of Irish Family Planning, 1968–80, Roman Birke, University of Vienna; Monetary Sovereignty – Historical Lessons, Charles Larkin, Trinity College Dublin; Exchange rates and credit conditions in Ireland 1760–1826, Daniel Cassidy, NUI Galway Aidan Kane, NUI Galway; and Evolution or Revolution? Monetary Thinking in the Departments, Ella Kavanagh, University College Cork.