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Dr. Melanie Hayes

Research Fellow (History Of Art)
      
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Dr. Melanie Hayes

Research Fellow (History Of Art)

 HAYESM7@tcd.ie

 


Dr Melanie Hayes Research Fellow, European Research Council Advanced Grant project, STONE-WORK I am an architectural historian, focusing largely on eighteenth-century architectural and craft history, with a specific interest in the transmission, reception and production of architecture and craftsmanship in Britain and Ireland. I am particularly concerned with the people who populate this building history, and the interdependence between the range of agents responsible for bringing these works into being. While investigative documentary research is central to my approach, there is a strong material dimension to my work, which seeks to relate the tangle evidence of a building's fabric to the often intangible or tacit processes involved in its making. My recent research has explored the collaborative nature of work practice within the eighteenth-century building industry, contributing to a burgeoning new direction in the study of architectural labour and agency in the period. My role as an Irish Research Council Advanced Laureate Project Fellow on CRAFTVALUE (2019-2023) adopted a wide-ranging and rigorously investigative approach in seeking to challenge the traditional focus on the individual designer and patron to create a new skills-based perspective on the architecture of Britain and Ireland in the long eighteenth century. https://craftvalue.org/research-team/ I currently work as a research fellow on the European Research Council Advanced Grant project, STONE-WORK at Trinity College Dublin, which seeks to reassess the history of architecture in Britain and Ireland through the lens of material - stone - and making, focuses on retrieval of the craft processes and techniques which produced the finished stone surfaces of classical architecture in the eighteenth century. Recent publications include: Between Design and Making: Architecture and craftsmanship 1630"1760. Edited by Andrew Tierney and Melanie Hayes, foreword by Christine Casey. London: UCL Press, July 2024. Open Access PDF, 368 Pages, 162 colour illustrations. ISBN: 9781800086944 DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800086937 Free open access download https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/238837 Enriching Architecture: Craft and its conservation in Anglo-Irish building production, 1660"1760. Edited by Christine Casey and Melanie Hayes, foreword by Glenn Adamson. UCL Press, 2023. Open Access PDF, 396 Pages, 247 colour illustrations. ISBN: 9781800083547 DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800083547 Free open access download: www.uclpress.co.uk/EnrichingArchitecture Press & Media Featured in a series of videos that takes a look at some of the key historical research, conservation and restoration work that went in to creating 14 Henrietta Street14 Henrietta Street: Making a Museum Meeting- meet the authors, Dr Melanie Hayes, eps. 1- 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFluM2wFYjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9pjm4mwA9Q&t=7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFP3iLxXTw&t=4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qedwfjC8dWQ&t=14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T5wivHNE7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfXZFkU4KkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YywZWctNkPY&t=2s Featured in Olivia Kelly, 'Lipstick on a pig? Why Dublin has failed to pretty-up O'Connell Street' The Irish Times, 5th May. 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/lipstick-on-a-pig-why-dublin-has-failed-to-pretty-up-o-connell-street-1.3881825 Featured in Olivia Kelly, 'Last Georgian house on Dublin's O'Connell Street is at risk from neglect' The Irish Times, 7th Feb. 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/last-georgian-house-on-dublin-s-o-connell-street-is-at-risk-from-neglect-1.3784304 Featured in 'Henrietta Street museum', RTE Nationwide, RTE One, 7pm, October 13, 2017. https://twitter.com/rtenationwide/status/918775837813551105?lang=en
  Architecture and Urbanism   Architecture History   History of Architecture   Irish architecture, 18th and 19th centuries
Details Date From Date To
Member of the Irish Architectural Archive company 2023 present
Melanie Hayes, Nele Lüttmann, Ruth Siddall and Patrick Wyse Jackson, eds., Enabling Architecture: Sourcing, selecting and supplying stone, 2027, Book, SUBMITTED
`Behind the facade: materiality, craft and display at the Provost's House, Trinity College Dublin' in, editor(s)Peigin Doyle , Within|Without: the archaeology of partitions, Dublin, Wordwell, 2026, [Melanie Hayes], Book Chapter, IN_PRESS
Urban estates and the origins of urban planning in, editor(s)Colum O'Riordan , Pivot Points: moments and movements in the development of Ireland's built environment, 2026, pp26 - 36, [Melanie Hayes], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  URL
Melanie Hayes, Crafted legacies: artisanal wills in early Georgian Britain, 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 30, 2025, p98 - 117, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes, A stonemason's correspondence: the Darley letters, 1765, Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, 27, 2025, p96 - 105, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Andrew Tierney and Melanie Hayes (eds.), Between Design and Making: Architecture and craftsmanship 1630-1760, London, University College London Press, 2024, 368pp, Book, PUBLISHED  DOI
Architects and artificers: building management at Trinity College Dublin in the 1730s and 1740s in, editor(s)Andrew Tierney and Melanie Hayes , Between Design and Making: Architecture and craftsmanship 1630-1760, London, University College London Press, 2024, pp119 - 152, [Melanie Hayes], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI
Melanie Hayes, Review of Review of 'The Language of Architectural Classicism: From Looking to Seeing', by Edward McParland , Irish Arts Review, Summer, 2024, p116-117 , Review, PUBLISHED
Christine Casey and Melanie Hayes, Enriching Architecture: Craft and its conservation in Anglo-Irish building production, 1660-1760, London, UCL Press, 2023, vii - 362pp, Book, PUBLISHED  DOI
Retrieving craft practice on the early eighteenth-century building site in, editor(s)Christine Casey and Melanie Hayes , Enriching Architecture: Craft and its conservation in Anglo-Irish building production, 1660-1760, London, UCL Press, 2023, pp160 - 196, [Melanie Hayes], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
  

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Melanie Hayes and Andrew Tierney, `To well performe and finish: building practice at Blenheim Palace (1705-1722), Architecture in Rising, Building Sites of Europe, c. 1400-1700: Knowledge, Practice, Exchange, Downing College, Cambridge, 4-6 June 2026, 2026, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes and Andrew Tierney, `Building relations: collaboration, achievement & artisanal agency in Vanbrugh's architectural practice', Vanbrugh: From Stage to Stone, Vanbrugh 300, Downing College, Cambridge, 27 March 2026, 2026, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes and Andrew Tierney, Stone in Practice: technique in eighteenth century architecture, 27 February 2026, 2026, Wood Quay Venue, Civic Offices, Dublin City Council, Meetings /Conferences Organised, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes, Review of 'Newman University Church, Dublin: Architectural Revivalism in the British Isles and the Authority of Form' By Niamh Bhalla (UCL Press, London, 2024), The Burlington Magazine, March, 2026, p194-5 , Review, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes, `Behind the façade: materiality, craft and display at the Provost's House, Trinity College Dublin', Within|Without: the archaeology of partitions: 8th National Monuments Service annual archaeology conference, Trinity College Dublin, 18 October 2025, 2025, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes and Nele Luttmann, The Stone Industry in Britain and Ireland, 1700-1800, June, 2025, TLRH, Trinity College Dublin, Meetings /Conferences Organised, PUBLISHED
Melanie Hayes and Andrew Tierney, Constructing Classicism: the Printing House at Trinity College Dublin, Designing Urban Universities, Trinity College Dublin, 2023, 2023, Conference Paper, PRESENTED
Melanie Hayes, `Crafted Legacies: Artisans: Wills in Early Georgian' The Eighteenth-Century Last Will and Testament Britain', American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2022 Annual Meeting, Baltimore, USA, 2022, Conference Paper, PRESENTED
Melanie Hayes, Richard Castle and his workshop practice at Trinity College Dublin, Artisans and Architects ( 1660-1760), Trinity College Dublin, 7 & 8 April, 2022, Conference Paper, PRESENTED
Melanie Hayes and Andrew Tierney, Artisans and Architects ( 1660-1760), 7 & 8 April, 2022, TLRH, Trinity College Dublin, Meetings /Conferences Organised, PUBLISHED

  


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Award Date
Trinity College Dublin Studentship Award 2010-2013
Desmond Guinness Scholarship 2012
Thomas Damann Junior Memorial Award 2012
Undergraduate Awards of Ireland, Gold Medal 2009
Homan Potterton Prize 2009
William Roberts Prize 2008
Walker Memorial Prize 2007
My research focuses largely on eighteenth-century architectural and craft history, with a specific interest in the transmission, reception and production of architecture and craftsmanship in Britain and Ireland. I am particularly concerned with the people who populate this building history, and the interdependence between the range of agents responsible for bringing these works into being. While investigative documentary research is central to my approach, there is a strong material dimension to my work, which seeks to relate the tangle evidence of a building"s fabric to the often intangible or tacit processes involved in its making. My recent research has explored the collaborative nature of work practice within the eighteenth-century building industry, contributing to a burgeoning new direction in the study of architectural labour and agency in the period. My doctoral thesis, `Anglo-Irish architectural exchange in the early eighteenth century: patrons, practitioners and pieds-à-terre (TCD, 2016) http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/85198 is a cross-disciplinary contextualisation of inter-relationships between British and Irish architectural culture and practice in the first half of the eighteenth century. My broader research output has continued to build upon this approach, seeking to disseminate wide-ranging inter-disciplinary findings and methodology in both an academic context and at a wider public interface. My work on the research project surrounding the conservation and presentation of the museum at 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin involved collaborative engagement with public bodies and community stakeholders in bringing new research of societal importance to the wider public. This work utilised a range of innovative delivery platforms and dissemination tools including the production of multi-media digital content, public symposia and interactive workshops, and the publication of a significant volume on eighteenth century architectural and social history: The Best Address in Town: Henrietta Street, Dublin and its first residents, 1730-80 (Four Courts Press, 2020). My role as an Irish Research Council Advanced Laureate Project Fellow on CRAFTVALUE (2019-2023) adopted a similar wide-ranging and rigorously investigative approach in seeking to challenge the traditional focus on the individual designer and patron to create a new skills-based perspective on the architecture of Britain and Ireland in the long eighteenth century. https://craftvalue.org/research-team/ My current role as a research fellow on the European Research Council Advanced Grant Project, STONE-WORK (2023-2028), which seeks to reassess the history of architecture in Britain and Ireland through the lens of material - stone - and making, focuses on retrieval of the craft processes and techniques which produced the finished stone surfaces of classical architecture in the eighteenth century.