ProfessorEmily Mark-FitzGerald

Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald is Professor in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, where her research concerns Irish art history, visual culture, museum/heritage studies and cultural policy, and photography from the 19th c. - present. Her specialisations include the visual culture of famine, poverty, migration, and diaspora; Irish historical photography; memory, commemoration and public art; museum studies and heritage; and Irish cultural policy and institutions. She served as Head of the School from 2019-22, and was promoted to Professor in 2024. She is Head of Subject for Cultural Policy and Industries. Along with colleagues, she developed the new BA in Creative & Cultural Industries at UCD (part of the BA Humanities degree) at UCD, and currently serves as its Pathway Coordinator.

In 2025 she co-curated the exhibition Casimir Markievicz - A Polish Artist in Bohemian Dublin, 1903-13 at Dublin Castle, visited by 275,000+ viisitors from April - September. This major show included 80+ artworks and artefacts loaned from the National Gallery of Ireland, National Museum of Ireland, National Library of Ireland, Crawford Gallery, Dublin City Gallery - the Hugh Lane, UCD, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, United Arts Club, and numerous private collectors. A project co-produced with the Office of Public Works and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Dublin, it attracted widespread coverage (including a television segment on RTE Nationwide). A panel version of the exhibition is currently touring national and international venues.

Prof. Mark-FitzGerald served as one of three judges for the 2025 AIB National Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Art. During Spring/Summer 2025, Prof. Mark-FitzGerald also took up research fellowships at the Library of Congress (National Stereoscopic Association Fellowship) and the University of Toronto (Irish-Canadian University Foundation Craig Dobbin Legacy Fellowship). In Spring 2023 she was awarded the O'Donnell Fellowship in Irish Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Her current monograph-in-progress, Irish Visual Culture, Social Conflict, and Crisis (c.1840-1900), explores how mass audiences on the island of Ireland and in the global Irish diaspora began to visually encounter Irish poverty, social crisis, welfare, and reform for the first time at scale and with speed, due to technological and aesthetic developments that transformed visual culture from the 1840s-1900s. 

Previous monographs and book-length publications include a special issue of Irish University Review - 'Irish Studies: Beyond the Text (2025); co-editor of Dublin and the Famine (University College Dublin Press, 2022); and co-editor of The Great Irish Famine: Visual and Material Culture (Liverpool University Press, 2018). She is the author of the acclaimed Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument (Liverpool University Press, 2013; 2015), and is one of the primary experts on the visual and memory cultures associated with the Irish Famine. In the cultural policy realm, she was PI and author of the Irish Museums Survey 2016, the first major qualitative survey of Irish museums in a decade (funded by the Irish Research Council); and is the author of many peer-reviewed journal articles and essays in edited volumes.

Other exhibitions produced and curated include an exhibition on the Polish-born humanitarian of the Irish Famine Paul Strzelecki, launched in 2019 at the Royal Irish Academy and currently on national tour; and 'The Museum of August Destiny' (2016), a commissioned art exhibition installed at Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Co. Waterford and the Pearse Museum (OPW). Prof. Mark-FitzGerald is a frequent contributor to radio, television and print/online media, including BBC, RTE television and radio, Newstalk FM, Irish Times, The Conversation, Source Magazine, and History Ireland, as well as international media in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc. In 2020 she featured in the award-winning documentary 'The Hunger' (Tyrone Productions) broadcast on RTE.

Prof. Mark-FitzGerald was a founding editor of Artefact: the Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians in 2007, and the Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy in 2013. From 2014-22 she represented Art History on the Historical Studies Committee of the Royal Irish Academy. She is a core advisory board member of the International Network for Irish Famine Studies, funded by the European Research Council and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Active also in the Irish arts and cultural community, she served as one of the Directors of the Irish Museums Association from 2009-18; board member and later Chair of Arts and Disability Ireland from 2018-22; and ran the popular blog and arts jobs site www.artsmanagement.ie from 2007-24.

She is the recipient of major fellowships and research funding from the US-Ireland Alliance (Mitchell Scholarship), Mellon Foundation/Social Science Research Council, Humanities Institute of Ireland, Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Irish Academy, Irish Research Council, Enterprise Ireland, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and Wellcome Trust.