Ciarán Reilly, BA HDIH MA was an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar 2008-2010 and recently completed his Ph.D thesis, ‘Land agents and estate management in King’s County during the Great Famine 1838-53’ under the supervision of  Dr Terence Dooley. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow attached to the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses & Estates where he is carrying out research on the Strokestown Park House Archive which is presently deposited in the OPW/NUI Research and Archive Centre at Castletown. He has also tutored for the Department of History, 2007-08.

Publications

Edenderry, County Offaly and the Downshire Estate 1790-1800 (Dublin, 2007) no. 74 in the Maynooth Studies in Local Irish History Series

Edenderry 1820-1920: Popular politics and Downshire rule (Dublin, 2007)

Chapters in books

‘The burning of country houses in Co. Offaly during the revolutionary period, 1920-23’ in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway (eds) The Irish Country House: its past, present and future (Forthcoming, Dublin, 2011)

‘Clearing the estate to fill the workhouse: King’s County land agents and the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838’ in Virginia Crossman and Peter Gray (eds) Poverty and welfare in Ireland 1838-1948 (Forthcoming, Dublin, 2011)

‘The Famine in King’s County’ in John Crowley and William Smyth (eds), An Atlas of the Great Famine (Forthcoming, Cork, 2012)

‘The Great Famine and the Leinster estate’ in Patrick Cosgrove, Terence Dooley, Karol Mullaney-Dignam and Christopher Ridgway (eds) Carton and the Fitzgerald’s (Forthcoming, Dublin, 2012)

Articles in Journals

‘Industrial disputes and tensions in 1930s Offaly’ in Offaly Heritage, vol 6 (2010)

‘The Cartland’s of Ballykillen and Lumville: Landowners, middlemen, magistrates and yeomen’ in Offaly Heritage, vol 5 (2007)

‘Edenderry and the First World War’ in Offaly Heritage, vol 5 (2007)

Other publications

Introduction to Old Ordnance Survey Maps: Edenderry 1911 (Forthcoming, London, 2011)

Foreword in Tom Burnell, The Offaly War Dead: Casualties of the First World War (Dublin, 2010)

Editor of Edenderry Historical Society’s publications Images of Edenderry (Dublin, 2009) and Carved in Stone (Tullamore, 2010)

Conferences and Exhibitions organised

Joint convener of the Famine Conference in Strokestown Park House, County Roscommon, May 2011

‘Abandoned Mansions of Ireland’ an exhibition by Tarquin Blake in association with the OPW/CSHIHE at Castletown, County Kildare 1 April – 2 May 2011

Papers presented at conferences and seminars

‘Land agents and the management of landed estates 1835-1853’ at NUI Maynooth postgraduate research seminar 19 February 2009

‘The murder of Hector John Toler, second earl of Norbury , King’s County 1839’ at the Irish History Students Annual Conference, NUI Maynooth 6-7 March 2009.

‘The restoration of an Irish country house- the case of Ballybrittan House, county Offaly’ at the CSHIHE/ University of Catania Second Annual Conference, University of Catania, Sicily 25 May 2009

‘Clearing the estate to fill the workhouse: King’s County land agents and the workhouses in 1840s’ at the Poverty & Welfare Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, 26-27 June 2009

Land agents and agriculture on the eve of the Great Famine’ at Irish History Students Annual Conference, Trinity College Dublin, 19 February 2010

‘The Great Famine and the Leinster estate’ at Carton and the Fitzgerald’s conference, Carton House, 29 August 2010
‘The Irish Land Agent and the Great Famine’ at An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine) Symposium, organised by An Foras Feasa, NUI Maynooth, 25 November 2010

‘The Famine papers on deposit in the Castletown Archive and Research Centre: what they tell us about the Great Famine’ at OPW/CSHIHE Castletown Winter Lecture Series, 2 February 2011

‘The Strokestown Famine papers: what do they reveal about the Great Famine at local level?’ at Strokestown Park House Winter Lecture Series, 16 February 2011

Public lectures

‘The bearer of bad news and agrarian target: The role of the land agent in King’s County 1830-60’, at the Offaly Historical & Archaeological Society, Bury Quay, Tullamore 3 March 2008.

‘Aspects of the Irish revolution in Offaly 1919-23’, at the Blessington Historical Society, Blessington, County Wicklow 13 March 2008.

‘The nineteenth century Irish land agent’ at Clane Library, Clane Co Kildare 27 August 2008 part of National Heritage Week 2008

‘The historic houses of Offaly’ at Edenderry Historical Society, Edenderry Co. Offaly 29 August 2008 part of National Heritage Week 2008

‘The historic houses of county Offaly’ at Offaly Historical & Archaeological Society, Tullamore, 19 January 2009

‘The nineteenth century Irish land agent and the Great Famine’ at Kill Historical Society, county Kildare, 27 April 2009

‘An Irish Catholic landlord in the 1840s: Robert Cassidy and the management of his King’s County estate’ at Monasterevin Historical Society, county Kildare, 21 May 2009

‘The fortunes of Charleville Castle during the mid nineteenth century’, Charleville Castle, Tullamore, National Heritage week, 23 August 2010

‘The Famine diary of John Plunket Joly, 1843-48’ at the Offaly Historical & Archaeological Society, Tullamore, 21 February 2011

Committees

Postgraduate Representative (2009-2010) on the following committees at NUI Maynooth

• Governing Authority
• Academic Council
• Student Affairs and Equality Sub Committee
• Student Library Committee
• Research Committee