University College Cork

Current Projects Include:

Digital Atlas of Early Irish Carved Stone (DAEICS)
As PI of this project, I am collaborating with academics (Co-Is: Dr Patrick Gleeson, QUB; Dr Griffin Murray and John Sheehan, both UCC), postdoctoral fellows (Dr Diarmuid Ó Riain, UCC; Dr Kate Colbert, University of Galway), public and private sector partners (National Monuments Service, NI Historic Environment Division, Digital Heritage Age, Munster Archaeology) and c.20 community groups in both jurisdictions on the island. Together we will deliver a step-change in both the academic understanding and public appreciation of carved stone monuments of late prehistoric and early medieval date (c. AD 1–1200). Harnessing the results of recent in-depth research, new layers of standardised data are being added to the records of the NMS and NIHED in ArcGIS to create the atlas. This will be a powerful new tool to tackle an array of pressing research questions and a critical enabler of further targeted research. In collaboration with local communities, detailed studies of three internationally important collections, centred on Clonmacnoise, Armagh, and Iveragh, are showcasing how DAEICS can enrich our understanding of Ireland’s past and the island’s connections throughout Europe and beyond. The project is funded by the National Monuments Service of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, in partnership with the Heritage Council, through an IRC COALESCE INSTAR+ award.  

ECCLES: Early Christian Churches and Landscapes
Building on a 2016-2018 AHRC Network, the ECCLES project will investigate churches and landscapes before 1100 across Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England. It is part of a pan-European project – Corpus Architecturae Religiosae Europeae (CARE) – which uses a wiki-media database platform. ECCLES will adapt that platform to reflect the particularities of the evidence from Britain and Ireland, and to meet the needs of strategic, infrastructural, and educational stakeholders. An interactive digital image created in the first phase of the project will be turned into a fully functional online public web resource, making an important contribution both to scholarship and public understanding. PI: Prof. Thomas Pickles, University of Chester. Co-Is: Prof. Sally Foster, University of Stirling, and Dr Tomás Ó Carragáin.  


Previous Projects Include:

The Making Christian Landscapes (MCL) Project
As PI of this project, I collaborated with John Sheehan (Co-PI), Prof. Sam Turner, Newcastle University, Dr Paul MacCotter, UCC, Anne Connon and several private sector partners. Harnessing exciting new evidence from pre-development excavations of burial grounds and settlements, the project combined the methods of landscape archaeology with historical research on territories and landholdings to investigate the profound, long-term impact of Christianity on the landscapes and societies of Ireland and Atlantic Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Project outputs include two PhDs (Bernadette McCarthy, Gill Boazman), several additional affiliated PhD projects, more than forty articles in peer-reviewed journals and books, numerous invited lectures and conference presentations, an international conference, a substantial edited collection (Making Christian Landscapes in Atlantic Europe, 2016, 622pp), and a major monograph (Churches in the Irish Landscape AD 400-1100, 2021, 424pp). The project was funded by the National Monuments Service of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, in partnership with the Heritage Council through an INSTAR (Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research) Grant.  

Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual and Memory
This project involved the first comprehensive survey of the c.180 surviving early medieval churches in Ireland, and a wider study of the 700-year-long architectural tradition to which they belong. Though greatly revered by contemporaries, and built to house treasures of the golden age of Irish art such as the Book of Kells and the Ardagh chalice, these buildings had been neglected by scholars. The project explored why they looked as they did, and what they meant in the context of early Irish society. It showed that their simplicity was not because of ignorance of architecture elsewhere in Europe, but the result of an imperative to perpetuate a sacred building form associated with the founding saints, which gave these buildings a reliquary quality. The project analysed the architectural and monumental context of early medieval rituals for the first time. It involved detailed investigation of the layout of major ecclesiastical complexes such as Clonmacnoise and Glendalough and showed that some of them were laid out to recall distant sacred topographies, especially Jerusalem and Rome. The project also identified a clear political and ideological context for the first Romanesque churches in Ireland and showed that, to a considerable extent, the Irish Romanesque represents the perpetuation of a long-established architectural tradition. Project outputs include a PhD thesis, more than twenty articles in peer-reviewed journals and books, numerous invited lectures and conference presentations, and a major monograph published by Yale University Press which was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice.    

Inishmurray: Monks and Pilgrims in an Atlantic Landscape (Collins Press, 2008)
This was a collaboration with Jerry O’Sullivan, then of the University of Glasgow, now of Transport Infrastructure Ireland. Inishmurray, Co. Sligo, is one of the best-preserved early medieval monasteries in northern Europe, with unparalleled evidence of how resident monks and visiting pilgrims moved through its island landscape. The National Monuments Service commissioned a comprehensive survey of the island and targeted excavation of several monuments being eroded into the sea. These data formed the basis for wider analysis, involving historical and anthropological as well as archaeological research, which made a significant contribution to the study of ritual and social memory. Around the end of the first millennium the monastic community built a remarkable suite of stations on the island’s perimeter that helped to establish it as an important pilgrimage destination. We showed that these monuments, and the rituals they were designed to structure, are a distinct expression of a wider phenomenon attested to at cities and important monasteries elsewhere in early medieval Europe.  

Climate and Society in Ireland from Prehistory to the Present (Royal Irish Academy, 2021)
This substantial volume explores how a long-term perspective on human adaptations to climate change can inform Ireland’s response to the crisis we face today. A themed issue of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (PRIA) comprising thirteen specially commissioned studies, the volume is targeted at a scholarly audience, but its key findings and conclusions have been disseminated more widely through a series of blogs and podcasts. The project was a collaboration with Prof. James Kelly, DCU, Dr Gill Plunkett, QUB, and nineteen other contributors, with the support of PRIA’s Editorial Board and the staff of the Academy’s Publications Office, and input from numerous referees.