Skip to main content

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Menu Search


Trinity College Dublin By using this website you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with the Trinity cookie policy. For more information on cookies see our cookie policy.

      
Profile Photo

Professor Jane Ohlmeyer

Erasmus Smith's Chair of Modern History (History)

 


Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, MRIA, FBA, FTCD, FRHS, is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin and Chair of the Irish Research Council. Between 2015 and 2020 she was Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and has been a pioneer in advocating for Trinity's Arts and Humanities both nationally and internationally. Between 2015 and 2021, she chaired of the Irish Research Council, a body that funds frontier research across all disciplines. She was a driving force behind the development of the Trinity Long Room Hub and the 1641 Depositions Project.In 2023 she received the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Humanities, which is awarded to individuals who have made a demonstrable and internationally recognised outstanding scholarly contribution in their fields, and was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. Professor Ohlmeyer has led Trinity's bid as part of a consortium of partners for the successful award of €1.5 million for the project 'Shape-ID' (2018-21), 'Shaping Interdisciplinary Practices in Europe', funded by European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme. She is also the PI for the Marie Curie Sklodowska Actions Co-fund, Human+ (€2.8M), which is in partnership with the Adapt Centre (2020-25). The application was ranked second in Europe and will allow for the appointment of 18 postdoctoral fellows in the area of human-centred data and technology development. Between 2017 and 2020 she led the Mellon Foundation funded Global Humanities Institute on the 'Crises of Democracy', involving a global and interdisciplinary consortium of academics from Trinity, University of Zagreb, Central European University in Budapest, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, São Paulo University, and Columbia University in New York. In 2023 she received an Advanced ERC for VOICES: Life and Death, War and Peace, c.1550-c.1700. Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland. Professor Ohlmeyer is the author or editor of numerous articles and 13 books, including being the editor of Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Ireland, published in 2018, and launched by the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins in Dublin, and by President Elect Joe Biden in the United States. Her most recent book is an edition of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon's A Short View of the State and Condition of the Kingdom of Ireland (Oxford, 2020). She is currently working on a book on 'Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World'which she gave as the 2021 Ford Lectures in Oxford, which will appear with OUP in 2023. She has served as a Trustee of the National Library of Scotland and the Caledonian Research Foundation, was a member of the Council of the Royal Historical Society, President of the Irish Historical Society, member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and was a non-executive director of the Sunday Business Post. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and of a number of editorial and international advisory boards and a non-executive director of Key Capital. She has served on the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institute's international advisory board from 2017 to 2021.
  Depositions 1641   Digital Humanities   Early Modern Ireland (Colonialism, Plantation, Aristocracy, Lawyers, Warfare)   Humanities   Irish and British History 1500-1800   Warfare in Ireland, Britain and Europe 1500-1800
 Human Plus
 Shape-ID
 Crises of Democracy Global Humanities Institute (GHI)
 Conflict, Welfare and Memory during and after the English Civil Wars, 1642-1710
 TLRH-VRF COFUND

Page 1 of 3
Details Date
Chair, Irish Research Council 2015
International advisory board of the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes 2017
Scientific Advisory Board, Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities 2017
Co-chair of the Royal Irish Academy's Brexit Taskforce for the Republic of Ireland, where I assessed the impact that Brexit could have on research and education on the island, and outlined the risks and how these might be mitigated, and advised on potential opportunities. 2017
Parnell Fellow, Magdalene College, Cambridge 2014
Visiting Professor in History, Ashoka University, New Delhi 2017
Council Member of the Irish Legal History Society and member of the Editorial Board 2004-Present
Scientific Board of DARIAH.EU. DARIAH is a pan European research infrastructure that aims to enhance and support digitally enabled research and teaching across the arts and humanities (http://dariah.eu). 2015
W. B. Yeats Visiting Professor, São Paulo University, Brazil 2016
A member of the EHRI advisory board (http://www.ehri-project.eu/) 2010
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; 20047, Member of the Council 1998
Trustee and Guardian of Marsh's Library, Dublin 2008
Visting Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, Delhi 2015
Trustee of the National Library of Scotland 2000
International assessor for the Academy of Finland, Helsinki 2004
International assessor for the Arts and Humanities Research Council 2006
Chair, Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences [IRCHSS]-Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities [DARIAH] digitization committee. Irish Member, DARIAH 2008
Member of the Board of Governors for the Caledonian Research Foundation 2001
External assessor for the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2002
Irish Member for the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, Member States Expert Group on Digitization 2008
National Archives Advisory Committee 1/3/2011
Irish Member, European Strategic Research Infrastructures (Social Sciences and Humanities Working Group) 2007-present
International advisory board of the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes 2017
Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
Details Date From Date To
American Historical Association
British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Irish Gaelic Landscape Group
Irish Economic and Social History Group
Irish Legal History Society
American Conference of Irish Studies
President of the Irish Historical Society 2003 2005
Member of the Royal Historical Society, working with professional historians and advancing the scholarly study of the past.
Jane Ohlmeyer, Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023, vi - 336pp, Notes: [publication date - 9 Nov 2023 based on 2012 Ford Lectures], Book, IN_PRESS
Jane Ohlmeyer, `Uncovering Widows in the 1641 Depositions", Past & Present, 240, (1), 2021, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Shahmima Akhtar, Dónal Hassett, Kevin Kenny, Laura McAtackney, Ian McBride, Timothy McMahon, Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, and Jane Ohlmeyer, Decolonising Irish History? Possibilities, Challenges, Practices, Irish Historical Studies, 45, (168), 2021, p303 - 332, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Jane Ohlmeyer, A Short View of the State and Condition of the Kingdom of Ireland/The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, liii+ 136 pagespp, Book, PUBLISHED
Jane Ohlmeyer, `Decolonising Irish History? Possibilities, Challenges, Practices", IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems , (45), 2020, p1 - 30, Notes: [1. by Shahmima Akhtar, Dónal Hassett, Kevin Kenny, Laura McAtackney, Ian McBride, Timothy McMahon, Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, and Jane Ohlmeyer, , 45 (November, 2021), pp. 1-30.], Journal Article, PUBLISHED
'"Revising Anew" Early Modern Irish History' in, editor(s)Sarah Covington, Valerie McGowan-Doyle, Vincent Carey , Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives, London and New York, Routledge, 2018, pp321-30. , [Jane Ohlmeyer], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Jane Ohlmeyer, 'Eastward Enterprises: Colonial Ireland, Colonial India', Past & Present, 240, (1), 2018, p83-118 , Notes: [This article, published in the historical equivalent of Nature, derives from Ohlmeyer's current research. It invites us to rethink and re-evaluate the meaning of empire in the seventeenth century: empire as process; Ireland's position as England's first colony; Ireland as a 'laboratory' for empire in both the English Atlantic world and India; the contribution that people from Ireland made to European expansionism and imperialism; and the impact that empire had on mindsets and material culture, on the cuisine and clothing of people in early modern Ireland. Transnational and global history is very much in vogue but this article builds on Ohlmeyer's earlier work (published in volumes edited by Canny (1998), by Kenny (2004) and by Bourke and MacBride (2016)) on conquest, 'civilization', colonisation, and commercialisation; on her current collaborations with Richard Ross and Phil Stern on Anglicization in and through law in British America, Ireland and India; and on her research on the records of the East India company during the later seventeenth century. This article is also a taster for Ohlmeyer's next research project on 'Ireland, Empire, and the early modern world', which will form the basis of the Ford Lectures in Spring 2021. The Ford Lectures date from 1896 and over the years, less than 10 women have delivered them. The last person from a university in Ireland invited to give the Fords was F.S.L Lyons in 1977, when he was the Provost of Trinity College Dublin. ], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Jane Ohlmeyer, The Cambridge History of Ireland. Vol. 2. Early Modern Ireland, 1550-1730 , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, Notes: [The four-volume Cambridge History of Ireland cover 1500 years of Irish history. Aimed at a general as well as an academic readership, they offer an up to date and exciting synthesis of modern scholarship from the seventh century to the present, and a fresh assessment of the state of Irish history writing at the turn of the twenty-first century. The volumes bring together 100+ contributors from 38 institutions in China, the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and, of course, Ireland. Ohlmeyer worked very closely with the other editors to shape intellectual content and structure of these pioneering volumes. She commissioned the chapters, edited and wrote the introduction to volume 2 Early Modern Ireland, 1550-1730. Her volume challenges the traditional chronological emphases in order to stretch boundaries of expertise and to move beyond the familiar. It provides a multiplicity of perspectives and offers fresh appraisals of key figures and the familiar events that dominate the traditional historical landscape. Well-known men and lesser-known women, usually members of the elite, are re-evaluated alongside ordinary people, who are so often absent from the historical narrative, along with their families and local communities. Every effort has been made to interrogate all available evidence in whatever language it exists and in every form that it survives - written, visual, material, physical, and oral - and to draw insights from a variety of disciplines, especially anthropology, archaeology, digital humanities and literary, gender and cultural studies. Ohlmeyer hopes that her volume will encourage more comparative history. The fact that Ireland responded to similar sets of transformative processes as other states - globalisation, state formation, confessionalisation, the professionalisation of warfare, commercialisation and so on - and was part of a 'composite monarchy' and the British empire facilitates greater comparative and transnational approaches. The importance of The Cambridge History of Ireland as the 'go to' volumes for anyone interested in Irish history and what it means to be Irish cannot be overstated. ], Book, PUBLISHED  DOI
'Conquest, Civilization, Colonization: Ireland, 1540-1660' in, editor(s)Richard Bourke and Ian MacBride , The Princeton Guide to Modern Irish History , Princeton, (Princeton University Press, 2016, pp21-47 , [Jane Ohlmeyer], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
''Scottish peers' in seventeenth-century Ireland' in, Scots in early modern Ireland, Manchester, MUP, 2016, pp62 - 94, [Jane Ohlmeyer], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI
  

Page 1 of 13
Jane Ohlmeyer, Giovanna M R Lima, Sarah Bowman, Eve Patten, Micheal O Siochru, (2020), '1641 Depositions: Sharing our history, building a legacy' [pdf], Notes: [This impact case study is supported by the Research Impact Unit, an initiative by the Office of the Dean of Research and the Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin. We thank Dr Annaleigh Margey, Dr Edda Frankot, and Dr Caitriona Curtis for their contributions in early drafts of this document.], Impact Case Study, PUBLISHED
Spaapen, Jack; Vienni Baptista, Bianca; Buchner, Anna; Pohl, Christian, Report on Survey among interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary researchers and post-survey interviews with policy stakeholders, March, 2020, Notes: [SHAPE-ID results provide evidence and recommendations to government research and innovation policy on the potential of AHSS integration for responding to the significant challenges Europe faces in areas like health, food and agriculture, climate change, technological innovation and security, among others.], Report, PUBLISHED
Vienni Baptista, Bianca; Fletcher, Isabel; Maryl, Maciej; Wciślik, Piotr; Buchner, Anna; Lyall, Catherine; Spaapen, Jack; Pohl, Christian, Final Report on Understandings of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research and Factors of Success and Failure, March, 2020, Notes: [SHAPE-ID results provide evidence and recommendations to government research and innovation policy on the potential of AHSS integration for responding to the significant challenges Europe faces in areas like health, food and agriculture, climate change, technological innovation and security, among others.], Report, PUBLISHED
Vienni Baptista, Bianca; Lyall, Catherine; Ohlmeyer, Jane; Spaapen, Jack; Wallace, Doireann; Pohl, Christian, Improving pathways to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: first lessons from the SHAPE-ID project - Policy Brief, March, 2020, Notes: [SHAPE-ID results provide evidence and recommendations to government research and innovation policy on the potential of AHSS integration for responding to the significant challenges Europe faces in areas like health, food and agriculture, climate change, technological innovation and security, among others.], Report, PUBLISHED
Vienni Baptista, Bianca; Maryl, Maciej; Wciślik, Piotr; Fletcher, Isabel; Buchner, Anna; Wallace, Doireann; Pohl, Christian, Preliminary Report of Literature Review on Understandings of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research, December, 2019, Notes: [SHAPE-ID results provide evidence and recommendations to government research and innovation policy on the potential of AHSS integration for responding to the significant challenges Europe faces in areas like health, food and agriculture, climate change, technological innovation and security, among others.], Report, PUBLISHED
Ireland in the Early Modern World in, editor(s)Jane Ohlmeyer , The Cambridge History of Ireland. Vol. 2. Early Modern Ireland, 1550-1730, Cambridge University Press, 2018, [Jane Ohlmeyer], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Jane Ohlmeyer, The 'Old British History' and the early modern period, Historical Journal, 2007, p499 - 512, Review Article, PUBLISHED
Jane Ohlmeyer, Military migration and the three Stuart kingdoms: a comparative survey, 2007, Notes: [Paper to the Conferece Seminario Científico: La nación irlandesa en el ejército y la sociedad hispana (siglos XVI-XVIII), in a collection of essays edited by Enrique García Hernán and Óscar Recio Morales and sponsored by the Ministries for Education and Defence and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid (2007). ], Working Paper, PUBLISHED

  

Award Date
Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy 2023
2023 Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Humanities, which is awarded to individuals who have made a demonstrable and internationally recognised outstanding scholarly contribution in their fields. 2012
Advanced ERC for VOICES: Life and Death, War and Peace, c.1550-c.1700. Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland 2023
Ford Lectures, Oxford 2021
'Stand up for Research', Trinity Research Excellence Awards 2020 2020
Societal Impact - Innovation Award, Trinity College Dublin 2018
A 'Choice Outstanding Academic Title' for Making Ireland English. 2013
W. B. Yeats Visiting Professor, São Paulo University, Brazil 2016
Visting Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, Delhi 2015
Parnell Fellow, Magdalene College, Cambridge 2014-15
Member, Royal Irish Academy 2011
Dept. of Education for Northern Ireland postgraduate award for study at Trinity College, Dublin 1987-90
Keck Foundation Fellowship for study at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California 1992-93
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) summer stipend for research in London and Dublin 1994
British Academy Travel Award. 1996
British Academy Small Grants Award 1997
Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow 1999-01
International assessor for the Academy of Finland, Helsinki 2004-present
. Ireland and Empire . Irish History in the 17th Century - social, political . Early modern British history . The "Military Revolution" of early modern Europe