Queen’s University Belfast (School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics (HAPP)), in partnership with National Museums NI, invites applications from suitably qualified applicants for a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, to conduct research leading to a PhD on the theme: Ulster-Americans: Ulster immigrant life in an American city tenement, 1840-1910. This PhD is based in social history, migration history, and Gallery and Museum Studies. While they are drastically understudied, emigrants from Ulster made up vocal and significant proportions of the United States’ urban Irish population. They were both part of diasporic Irish communities and, in some ways, separate to emigrants from the other three provinces. However, they remain siloed from the story of Irish migration, in academic and popular narratives. This PhD will therefore present an original and important intervention into the historiography of Irish emigration, United States history, and has the potential to present new opportunities for the framing of popular narratives of Ulster emigration.

This project will provide a comprehensive background to new interpretation at the Ulster American Folk Park. It will explore life and living conditions for Ulster migrants to American cities between 1840 and 1910. The researcher will spend time researching and contextualising the material culture of Ulster-American life, delving into relevant museum collections and, through consideration of other sites’ best practice, explore how the UAFP could best present case studies of Ulster emigrant life in American tenements.

The focus of this PhD will be on the experiences of Ulster emigrants to northern cities in the United States – an experience which is currently understudied in Irish migration history which tends to separate Protestant and Catholic experiences, and in Ulster historiography, which emphasises Ulster Presbyterian life in rural settings. It will therefore contribute to filling a gap in Irish diaspora scholarship while presenting opportunities for additional interpretation in the UAFP. The time-period studied allows for consideration of multigenerational community identity development, expanding the narrative from dominant male middle class experiences to familial structures, single working women, and children growing up in an American city. This, therefore, allows for the exploration of themes of class, gender, religion, and, as these migrants were living and loving in multi-ethnic urban spaces, ethnicity and race. In these ways, this project contributes to the historiography of Irish migration and the priorities of NMNI.

This project will be jointly supervised by lead supervisor Dr Sophie Cooper (Queen’s University Belfast) and Liam Corry (Curator of Emigration, National Museums NI), and second supervisors Victoria Millar (Senior Curator of History, National Museums NI) and Prof Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University Belfast). The student will be expected to spend time at both Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster American Folk Park (Omagh, Northern Ireland), and be part of a wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.