9-10 October 2025
The Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin
As we approach a series of 250th anniversaries relating to the period of the American Revolution we invite scholars to submit papers for our forthcoming conference: ‘Ireland and the American Revolution’. Taking place in the Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin on the 9-10 October 2025, the conference will be a forum for historians, scholars, and educators to explore the role of Ireland and its people in this transformative period. The aim of the event is to delve into the connections, contributions, and impacts of Ireland on the revolutionary era, highlighting Irish influence, and its enduring legacy, on the formation of the United States.
The conference will bring historians of Ireland and America together to discuss both the fruitful comparisons that can be drawn between Ireland, America, and the wider Atlantic world in the late eighteenth century and the limits of these comparisons. Comparative accounts of the Imperial Crisis and the American Revolution have revealed striking similarities and significant differences in the circumstances that communities and peoples were faced with in each context. This conference will offer scholars the opportunity to shed new light on these similarities and differences, and in doing so spark dialogue along a number of different lines.
Professor Eliga Gould (New Hampshire) will be giving the keynote address, and other confirmed participants include Professor Nicholas Canny (Galway), Professor Patrick Geoghegan (Trinity College Dublin), Professor Patrick Griffin (Notre Dame), and Dr James Stafford (Columbia).
We invite proposals for papers on all aspects of Ireland and the American Revolution, but particularly on the following themes:
– The Imperial Crisis, 1756-1775: shared roots of rebellion and revolution
– Ireland, the Caribbean, and slavery in the Atlantic world during and after the American War of Independence
– Indigenous responses and local reactions to the American Revolution in Ireland and North America
– The press and the news: the flow of news and revolutionary ideas between Ireland, America, and the wider Atlantic world
– Loyalism in Ireland and America
– The Catholic Church and eighteenth-century revolutions
– Irish immigration and the American Revolution
– Representative institutions in Ireland, the American colonies, and the Early Republic: comparative studies of political institutions, cultures, and elite and popular politics
Please submit an abstract of 250 words and a brief bio by the 1 May 2025. Join us in uncovering the rich and multifaceted history of Ireland and the American Revolution. For submissions and inquiries, contact us at irelandandamerica250@gmail.com.
The conference is chaired by Dr Joel Herman (Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin) and Dr Tim Murtagh (Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin/Public Record Office of Northern Ireland), and supported by Dr Patrick Walsh (Trinity College Dublin) and Dr Jonathan Wright (Maynooth University).
