DrMary McAuliffe

Mary McAuliffe is a historian, lecturer, and Director of Gender Studies at UCD. She specialises in Irish women's / gender history, trauma histories of gendered and sexual violence of Ireland's revolutionary period, and histories of sexualities. She completed her BA (Hons), MA, and PhD at the School of History and Humanities, Trinity College, Dublin (TCD). Her most recent publications are 'The Civil War in Kerry and Beyond; Histories, memories and legacies' (Four Courts Press, 2025, co-edted with Bridget McAuliffe and Owe O'Shea, Jennifer Redmond & Mary McAuliffe (eds) The politics of gender and sexuality in modern Ireland; A Reader (Four Courts Press, 2024) https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2024/the-politics-of-gender-and-sexuality-in-modern-ireland/ and Mary McAuliffe & Harriet Wheelock The Diaries of Kathleen Lynn - A Life Revealed through Personal Writing, UCD Press 2023, https://www.ucdpress.ie/display.asp?isbn=9781910820018&

She also published a biography of the feminist, trade union activist, and revolutionary woman, Margaret Skinnider (UCD Press, 2020). She is co-editor, with Emilie Pine (UCD) and Miriam Haughton (NUIG), of 'Commemoration, Gender and the Postcolonial Carceral State', published by Manchester University Press in November 2021. She is the co-author on 'We were There; 77 Women of the Easter Rising' (Four Courts, 2016) and co-editor of 'Kerry 1916; Histories and Legacies of the Easter Rising' (IHP, 2016) and has published widely on aspects of Irish women's history, gendered and sexual violence in war, memory, and history, social and political history, public history.

Other publications include 'Irish Homes and Irish Hearts' (Fanny Taylor, 1867) -edited and introduced (UCD Press Classic series, 2013). She co-edited the 'Palgrave Advances in Irish History'. (2010) and she published a biography on 'Senator Kathleen Browne 1876-1943' (2009)., 'Richmond Barracks 1916: We Were There, 77 Women of the Easter Rising' was chosen by Dublin Public Libraries as its featured book of the 2016 commemoration of the 1916 Rising. Her ongoing project is on gendered and sexual violence during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, and that will be published in 2022. 
She has been involved in several public history projects, including the 1916 exhibitions and commemorative quilt project at Richmond Barracks and the 1916 centenary exhibition at the Royal College of Surgeons. She coordinated the 2014 commemoration conference of the centenary of the founding of Cumann na mBan (1914) in association with the Dept of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and the WHAI. She was a member of the National Museum of Ireland Decade of Centenaries Commemoration Advisory Committee. She co-organised WHAI2021 at UCD - 'Besieged bodies: Gendered violence, sexualities and motherhood' which featured 4 keynote addresses, 12 panels, and 50 papers on Women's and Gender Histories.
She was President of the Women's History Association of Ireland (2011-2014) and continues on as a committee member of the WHAI (https://womenshistoryassociation.com/ ). She is also a member of the UCD Humanities Institute
( https://www.ucd.ie/humanities/people/academicmembership/#d.en.70638) and is on the executive committee of the UCD Centre for Gender, Feminisms, and Sexualities (CGFS - https://cgfs.ie/).

She is on the advisory committee on the representation of women's stories in the National Cultural Institutions. She is also on the advisory board of the Irish Association of Professional Historians (www.iaph.ie) and is a past President of the Women's History Association of Ireland (WHAI).

As well as publications, she contributes to documentaries, radio, TV, news media, and has an active online presence at @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social and on LinkedIn.  She was most recently a consultant and contributor to the groundbreaking documentary on gendered and sexual violence against women in the Irish War of Independence and Civil War - 'Cogadh ar Mhna/War on Women' and Croíthe Radacacha/Radical Hearts, a TG4 documentary on 8 queer female couples at the heart of the Irish revolutionary period. 

 
Mary is module leader on SSJ20110 Gender, Power and Politics,  Gender War and Violence (SSJ30070), and SSJ10070 Exploring Gender, and at the postgraduate level, Gender, Sexuality, and the Body; The Politics of Belonging (GS40110),

She would welcome proposals from potential PhD students on topics including: Irish gender/women's history, feminism and feminist histories, memory studies, social and political history, war and revolution, feminist activism, and politics.

 
Professional work: Historical/ Heritage Research. Documentary (Film, TV, Radio) Research.