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Dr. Patrick Walsh

Associate Professor (History)
      
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Dr. Patrick Walsh

Associate Professor (History)

 walshp9@tcd.ie

 


am an economic, social and political historian of eighteenth-century Ireland. My current research investigates the processes of state formation in eighteenth-century Ireland within a comparative imperial perspective. I am especially interested in the ways in which the agents of the emerging Irish state negotiated and collaborated with the different interests and groups within Irish society and have written extensively on the history of Irish taxation and the Irish version of the fiscal military state. To this end I have also collaborated with colleagues in the National University of Ireland, Galway on a database of Ireland's international trade, 1683-1829 while I am also co-investigator on the Irish Residential Army Barracks project at UCD. Most recently I have become increasingly interested in the history of Irish property in the long eighteenth-century and its financial and other connections to empire. Prior to coming to Trinity I taught at University College London (UCL) and previous to that I held an IRC-Marie Curie-Sklodowska postdoctoral mobility fellowship jointly at UCL and UCD. I am currently Co- PI (with Dr Andrew MacKillop, University of Glasgow) on a project funded by the AHRC and the IRC digital humanities networking scheme entitled Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records: New Transkribus and Natural Language Processing Approaches I am also Co-PI (with Dr Ciaran O'Neill) on the Trinity Colonial Legacies project
  18h century Irish history   Ireland and Empire   Irish economic history   Irish History   Trinity Colonial Legacies
Project Title
 Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records: New Transkribus and Natural Language Processing Approaches
From
Aug. 2020
To
Feb. 2022
Summary
Funding Agency
Irish Research Council and AHRC
Programme
Digital Humanities Network Grant
Project Title
 Trinity's Colonial Legacies
From
Sept. 2021
To
Sept. 2023
Summary
Funding Agency
Trinity Philanthropy
Project Type
Research Project
Project Title
 The Royal Dublin Society: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism
From
1 Sept. 2024
To
31 Aug. 2026
Summary
Funding Agency
Irish Research Council
Programme
Enterprise scheme
Project Type
Postdoctoral Project
Project Title
 Ireland and the Infrastructure of Empire: Local, National and Global Perspectives
From
2019
To
2023
Summary
Funding Agency
Trinity Philanthropy
Programme
Provost's Project Award
Project Title
 VRTI Tailte Eireann Reading the Deeds
From
1 August 2024
To
31 December 2024
Summary
The Registry of Deeds (now part of Tailte Eireann) contains an extraordinary archive of property transactions stretching back to its foundation in 1708. These records though long known to historians have been under-utilised by scholars who have either been overwhelmed by the scale of the records, the limitations of existing finding aids, or daunted by the complexity of understanding their content. Advances in digital humanities especially the development of sophisticated automatic transcription software (Transkribus), now provides an opportunity to investigate these records in a systematic fashion. This project builds on two prior research initiatives. Firstly, Tailte Eireann have collaborated with TCD through the IRC/AHRC funded Deeds and Sasines project led by Dr Patrick Walsh and Dr Andrew MacKillop (Glasgow) which led to the publication of a public-facing guide to their records. Secondly Taitle Eireann have become a core partner of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) with sample digitised volumes now available through the VRTI portal. Continuing such academic partnerships has become a core element in the Digitisation Strategy policy being pursued by Tailte Eireann. Working under the direction of Dr Patrick Walsh (Assistant Professor of 18th Century Irish History, TCD) in partnership with archival colleagues in Tailte Eireann and Digital Humanities experts in the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland one postdoctoral research assistant will be employed on a short term contract focused on a specific purpose.
Funding Agency
Virtual Fecord Treasury of Ireland Philanthopic Funding
Project Type
Pilot Research Project
Person Months
5

Page 1 of 2
Details Date
Director Castletown Foundation 2012
Member, Tailte Eireann Registry of Deeds Digitisation Advisory Group 2019
General Editor, Eighteenth-Century Ireland 2014
Peer Reviewer for Irish Historical Studies, English Historical Review, Scottish Historical Review, Historical Research, Economic History Review, English Studies, Irish Economic and Social History and Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 2016
Peer Reviewer for monographs submitted to Palgrave MacMillan and Routledge 2016
Member of Judging Panel for Economic History Society New Researchers Prize, Cambridge, April 2016 2016
Commissioned by Office of Public Works to write comprehensive new 64-page guidebook to Castletown House, Co. Kildare (8,000 copies printed). 2007
Details Date From Date To
Director, Castletown Foundation 2012 Present
Committee Member Eighteenth Century Ireland society 2020 Present
Member Digitisation Strategy Advisory Group, Tailte Eireann 2020 Present
Member Advisory Board of Beyond 2022: Virtual Treasury of Ireland 2018 2020
Member Economic History Society 2010 Present
Member Irish Economic and Social History Society 2012 Present
Member Money, Power and Print Network 2006 2014
Confiscation, Colonialism, and the Making of the Eighteenth-Century Irish Country House in, editor(s)Annie Tindley Ruth Connolly , Culture, Capital and the Country House, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2026, [Patrick Walsh], Book Chapter, IN_PRESS
Trinity's Colonial Legacies. Transparency, Instrumentality, and Agency in an Engaged Research Project in, editor(s)Peter Bille Larsen, Markéta Križová, , Dealing with Complex Heritage: Revisiting University Pasts in Contemporary Practice, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2025, pp67 - 95, [Patrick Walsh, Mobeen Hussain, Ciaran O'Neill], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Patrick Walsh, `This Thing Called a Bank": Swift"s Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture and the 1720 national bank proposals, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 40, 2025, p75 - 89, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Patrick Walsh, James Stafford. The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750"1848., The American Historical Review, 129, (4), 2024, p1834 - 1835, p1834-1835 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Speaker William Conolly (1662"1729) in, editor(s)Ruth Thorpe, Mary Heffernan , Portrait of a Family: The Conollys of Castletown, Dublin, Wordwell Press, 2023, pp1 - 10, [Patrick Walsh], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Katherine Conolly, 1660-1752 in, editor(s)Ruth Thorpe Mary Heffernan , Portrait of a Family, Dublin, Wordwell, 2023, pp11 - 18, [Patrick Walsh], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Mobeen Hussain, Ciaran O'Neill and Patrick Walsh,, Report on George Berkeley's Legacies at Trinity, 2023, Report, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Patrick Walsh, Introduction to the Memorials and Transcription Books in the Registry of Deeds, Property Registration Authority, October, 2022, p1 - 27, Report, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Patrick Walsh, Edmund Burke's Political Economy, Studies in Burke and His Time, 30, 2021, p149 - 162, Review Article, PUBLISHED
Patrick Walsh Douglas Kanter, Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662-2016, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, 1 - 367pp, Book, PUBLISHED
  

Page 1 of 4
Mobeen Hussain, Ciaran O'Neill and Patrick Walsh,, Draft Trinity Colonial Legacies Working Paper on TCD and Slavery, 2023, Working Paper, PUBLISHED
Patrick Walsh, Deeds and Sasines Working Paper 1: Registry of Deeds Typologies , 2022, Notes: [. This research/project was funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council under the 'UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Networking Call' (grant numbers AH/V002376/1 and IRC/V002376/1], Working Paper, PUBLISHED
Aidan Kane, Eoin Magennis and Patrick Walsh, 'Ireland and Ireland's International Trade, 1683-1825', NUI Galway, 2021, Dataset, PUBLISHED
Patrick Walsh, Review of Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison 1750-1850: A Political History, by Richard Butler , Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 36, 2021, p165-68 , Review, PUBLISHED
Patrick Walsh, Review of Irish Proclamations, 1660-1820, by James Kelly and Mary Ann Lyons , Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 34, 2019, p147-50 , Review, PUBLISHED
Charles Ivar McGrath, Patrick Walsh, Suzanne Forbes , 'Army Barracks of Eighteenth-Cenrtury Ireland', https://barracks18c.ucd.ie/, University College Dublin, 2016, -, Map, GIS map, PUBLISHED
Patrick Walsh, Castletown, Dublin, Office of Public Works, 2007, Book, PUBLISHED
The differing motivations for preventing transatlantic emigration: a case study from west Ulster 1718-1729 in, editor(s)Shane Murphy Johanna Archbold John Gibney Carole Jones , Beyond the anchoring grounds: More crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies , Belfast, Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, 2005, pp324 - 330, [Patrick Walsh], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED

  


Award Date
Fellow of Trinity College Dublin 2023
Certificate of Achievement, Civil Service Excellence and Innovation Awards 2022
Irish Research Council (IRC) and Arts and Humanties Research Council (AHRC)Digital Humanities Networking Grant May 2020
Provosts Project Award 2019
IRC New Foundations Award 2015
IRC CARA Cofund/Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship 2011-2015
IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship 2008-2010
IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship 2004-2007
I am an internationally recognised leader in my field of eighteenth-century Irish history as evidenced both by extensive publications and success in gaining competitive funding. In 2023 I was elected a fellow of TCD based on my research. My first monograph, The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, focused on the politics of the Irish ascendancy elite while my my second monograph The South Sea Bubble in Ireland demonstrates how Irish history can contribute to international historical debates. This book led to ground-breaking research on state formation during a Marie Curie Sklodowska fellowship at University College London. The outputs from this research (2 edited books and 4 articles/book chapters) have made a significant contribution to debates in European, British, and Atlantic history on the phenomenon of the fiscal-military state. My third monograph A Colonial Sinew of Power (currently under review at Oxford University Press) develops this research offering a new interpretation of eighteenth-century Ireland. As Co-PI on the Trinity Colonial Legacies project, I am writing a joint authored monograph (for the OUP History of Universities Series). This project brings together my expertise in Ireland"s relationship with empire and the history of colonialism in Ireland, while the broad scope of our book will make an innovative contribution to global debates about the legacies of colonialism. My research career has been defined by interconnections between land and money. Using innovative digital humanities methodologies developed through an IRC/AHRC grant (2020-22) and a successor project funded by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (2024) I am submitting (Autumn 2024), with collaborators in Glasgow and Sheffield, a large scale UKRI grant application on the historical intersections of property and credit. It will rethink the history of property ownership, and our understanding of the impact of proto-globalisation on the provincial societies of Scotland, Ireland and Yorkshire.