This article examines the way in which Irish American women teachers used education as a platform to extend the reach of their social and cultural capital, enabling them to subvert patriarchal and imperialist ideologies and, embracing subjectivity, assume key leadership roles in a range of associations fundamental to organised feminism. Drawing on…

Through the lens of nineteenth-century Irish society and through an interrogation of the diaries of one of the first women professors appointed to the National University of Ireland, this article traces the entry of women into the professoriate in Ireland. The aim of the paper is to extend the map of the international research agenda which speaks…

In recent years, and particularly with the emergence of cultural history,historians of education have begun to adopt a wide variety of theoretical approaches to their scholarship. Notwithstanding this, cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) remains underutilised in the field of history of education, despite being employed widely in other…

Historically, patriarchy has been as dominant in education in Ireland as elsewhere. In the Irish context, it was promoted through the male-dominated Catholic Church, which controlled either directly or indirectly the vast majority of education institutions in the country. This dominant hegemony was most powerful during the period…