ProfessorKatherine O'Donnell

Residential fellowship at Timothy Root House at Yale's Lewis Walpole Libray to support research in the library’s rich collections of materials from the British world of the long eighteenth-century. Recipients also have access to additional resources at Yale, including those in the Sterling Memorial Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Yale Center for British Art.

The research team worked closely with survivors of Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry to explore its operation and legacy. Since the team was denied access to the institutional archives held by the religious congregation that managed the institution, the insights of survivors were critical for informing the research. The team took a radically interdisciplinary approach to gathering information about Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry, using a very wide variety of sources, many of which had not been used for this purpose before. Contrary to state narratives, they found that financial records survived and that the laundry was in fact profitable. As part of the project, artefacts, correspondence and financial records from the site have been transferred to the National Museum of Ireland, so that they can be housed in the planned new museum at Sean McDermott Street. The research team is now advocating for new legislation to ensure institutional archives are preserved.

Each year UCC honours alumni who have achieved outstanding success in their chosen fields. UCC’s Alumni Achievement Awards programme recognises UCC alumni who have excelled in their life’s work, who have demonstrated leadership in their field and who have been a source of inspiration to students and of pride to the University. An Alumni Achievement Award is one of the highest honours the University can bestow upon a graduate.

The Open Heart City research project inspired a new future for the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin. Conducted over three years, the research involved consulting with institutional abuse survivors, local communities, local Government and national Government. It resulted in plans showing how the location could become a site of national conscience incorporating a museum and archive. Informed by this research, the Government announced in March 2022 that the site will become a National Centre of Research and Remembrance, comprised of a museum and exhibition space, an archive of records related to institutional trauma, and a place for reflection and remembrance, alongside social housing and community facilities, and an educational and early-learning facility. Crucially, the museum will teach current and future generations about what happened in Ireland’s institutions, contributing to what survivors have repeatedly expressed: that memorialisation should educate the public with a view to preventing similar abuses in the future.

Co-chair

Editorial Board Member for academic journal, Filanderas. Revista Interdisciplinar de Estudios Feministas,

Team award presented for Architectural Design VII - Open Heart City.

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Women who were incarcerated in Irish Magdalene laundries were awarded a State apology and redress scheme in 2013 following a four-year campaign by Justice for Magdalenes (JFM). UCD researcher Associate Professor Katherine O’Donnell was one of five people in JFM, which involved two academics, a lawyer and two adoption-rights activists who had founded the campaign. They made legal arguments based on evidence gathered in the archives and by collecting oral histories or spoken accounts relating to the time. They widely publicised their findings to raise national and international awareness about t