Science, Ireland and Colonialism
The Robert Boyle Winter School took place at the RDS Dublin, 18 February 2023 from 10 am – 4 pm.
Following on from the theme of our 10th annual Robert Boyle Summer School, this year’s Winter School addressed the topic of Science, Ireland & Colonialism.
Boyle’s father Richard was the most successful colonial adventurer of the 17th Century. Income from lands in Ireland help fund Boyle’s scientific programme. Boyle also had interests in certain colonial enterprises. In the succeeding centuries, there has been an interrelationship between science and colonialism. Meanwhile, Ireland both suffered under colonialism and participated in, and benefitted from colonialism. It is important and timely that we examine these issues with respect to Ireland.
Curious about this theme? You can watch those lectures back at the bottom of the page.
Programme
Morning Session, Chair: Dr Ida Milne
Dr Milne lectures in history at Carlow College and is chair of the History of Science and Medicine Network Ireland. She is author of Stacking the Coffins, Influenza, War and Revolution in Ireland, 1918-19 (Manchester University Press 2020)
Prof Peter Bowler, Queens University Belfast (Emeritus): Scientific Racism in Sustaining Colonialism
Prof Bowler is a historian of biology with extensive work on the history of environmental sciences and the history of genetics. He has published several papers and books over a 40-year period and was president of the British Society for the History of Science from 2004 – 2006. Current interests include the development and implications of Darwinism and the history of environmental sciences, science and religion. See his presentation here.
Dr Ciaran O’Neill, Trinity College Dublin, Dept. of History & Trinity Colonial Legacies Project
Dr O’Neill is Ussher Associate Professor in Nineteenth Century History, with a focus on cultural history, the history of education and elites and the Irish relationship with empire. He currently leads the Trinity Colonial Legacies Project, which seeks to contextualise and historicize the university’s deep links to colonialism both in Ireland itself and in the wider world. It also aims to raise awareness of the college’s physical and intellectual colonial legacies, monuments, and endowments in the present. See his presentation here.
Afternoon Session, Chair: Tommy Graham
Editor of History Ireland, convenor of History Ireland Hedge Schools and regular presenter of Newstalk’s Talking History, Tommy is well regarded for making Irish history accessible to the public.
Dr Sherra Murphy, Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dún Laoghaire: Colonialism and Dublin’s Natural History Museum
Dr Murphy is a Senior Lecturer in Critical and Cultural Studies, teaching visual and material culture at IADT Dun Laoghaire. Her work on the formation of the Natural History Museum Dublin as an interlocking set of historical, scientific, social, and visual frameworks was published as ‘The First National Museum’: Dublin’s Natural History Museum in the mid-nineteenth century in October 2021. The book was shortlisted for the 2022 Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize. See her presentation here.
Rachel Hand, Cambridge Ethnographic Collection: Science and Colonialism seen in the National Museum of Ireland Collection.
Rachel Hand is the Anthropology Collections Manager in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Her role seeks to balance the needs of the collections themselves with demands for access for exhibition and research by communities of origin, artists, academics and institutions. She continues to research the ethnographic collection at the National Museum of Ireland where she worked to catalogue the Ethnographic Collection from 2003 to 2006. She has published on Irish collecting within the British Empire and the early Cook-Voyage material from Trinity College, Dublin. See her presentation here.
Recordings of the presentations
This event was organised by Calmast, South East Technological University’s STEM Engagement Centre in partnership with the Royal Dublin Society, Science Foundation Ireland and Lismore Heritage Centre.
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