History lecture series – The Women of the Revolution

Dr Claire Nally (Northumbria University)

4 May 2017 7.30pm Free

The Women of Revolution

When we think of the 1916 Rising, we might initially think of Yeats’s ‘sixteen dead men’, who are rightly valorised in the nationalist canon of heroes. We might even think of Maud Gonne, iconic revolutionary, or Constance Markievicz, the only one of the rebel leaders who escaped execution. Less visible, however, are the three hundred women who also participated in the Rising – including Elizabeth O’Farrell, Julia Grenan, and Winifred Carmel, as well as countless other women, such as Margaret Naylor, who were caught up in the fighting. This lecture will address how women played a key part in the founding of the Irish State.