Call for papers

Irish Agricultural Development 1882–1972

CEPH Irish Research Initiative (CIRI) workshop

Trinity College Dublin (Online)

11 November 2024

Agriculture is pivotal to the story of Ireland, both historically and today. It provided employment, drove exports and dominated policy debates deep into the twentieth century. Throughout this period, the importance of agriculture waned, overtaken first by industry and then by the modern-service economy. This invites the question of why agriculture could not ‘modernise’ more quickly, an issue which vexed policymakers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Understanding the path of rural development in Ireland is crucial for interpreting both agricultural history and the ongoing story of Irish regional equality.

As part of the Centre for Economics, Policy, and History’s (CEPH) ongoing efforts to encourage and promote economic history research on Ireland, CEPH will be hosting a virtual workshop under the banner of the CEPH Irish Research Initiative (CIRI). This CIRI workshop will provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to present new studies on Irish agricultural development from the land wars to the EEC accession (roughly, 1882–1972). We welcome papers both on the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Areas of interest for this call include:

1. Irish agricultural co-operatives.
2. (Micro-)finance in the agricultural sector.
3. Value added in the agri-food economy.
4. The relation between land ownership / inequality and productivity of farms.
5. Innovations in Irish agriculture and husbandry.
6. Mechanization of Irish farms.

Papers are not limited to these topics and we also welcome related studies that are thematically relevant to the workshop. We particularly encourage early career academics, PhD, and master’s graduates to submit their research.

After the workshop, the presented papers will be collated as discussion papers on the CEPH website, https://ceph.ie/, and promoted through our dissemination channels. This workshop is an ideal opportunity for researchers to refine research topics they may have considered in the past, and hopefully build towards publication. This could be through individual publication, or special issue in journal related to the overarching workshop theme.

Submission information

Interested scholars are encouraged to submit an abstract of not more than 400 words. These should be emailed to Richard Franke at franker@tcd.ie before 15 September 2024.

For more information, please email: Professor Eoin McLaughlin at E.McLaughlin@hw.ac.uk or Dr Richard Franke at franker@tcd.ie.