Biography

Dr Oisín Wall is a historian of marginalised communities in 20th Century Ireland and Britain. He is a Lecturer at University College Cork’s Radical Humanities Laboratory and the School of History, and also holds a Wellcome Fellowship for the project ‘We are the Heroin Capital of Europe:’ Marginal Communities, Health, Identity, and the Opioid Epidemic in Twentieth-Century Ireland.
Wall has written two monographs. His book on the prisoners' rights movement in late-20th century Ireland, Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972-85, will be published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2024. His first monograph explored the intersection of institutional psychiatry and the counter-culture in 1960’s London (The British Anti-Psychiatrists, Routledge: 2017). He has published articles on the histories of prison activism, drug-use, and psychiatry; as well as museum studies and education. Beyond his academic publications he has curated three major international exhibitions on prison and medical history at the Science Museum (London) and Kilmainham Gaol Museum (Dublin). Wall is also a member of the Society for the Social History of Medicine’s executive committee and the editor of the society’s Gazette.

Research Grants

  Project Funding
Body 		Start Date End Date Award
‘We are the heroin capital of Europe’: Marginal Communities, Health, Identity, and the Opioid Epidemic in Twentieth-Century Ireland Wellcome Trust 15-NOV-21 15-NOV-23 €221,665.00
‘We are the heroin capital of Europe’: Marginal Communities, Health, Identity, and the Opioid Epidemic in Twentieth-Century Ireland. Foreign Research Institute 03-APR-23 31-OCT-25 €30,265.00
Living Inside: Six voices from the history of Irish prison reform 01-APR-19 20-SEP-20 €900.00
Medicine Galleries Research Strategy Wellcome Trust 01-DEC-16 01-JAN-20 €350,000.00
Anti-University of London Art & Humanities Research Council 01-SEP-14 01-SEP-15 €1,150.00

Books

  Year Publication
(2024) Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–1985.
Oisín Wall (2024) Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–1985. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. [ Publisher's Version] [Details]
(2017) The British Anti-Psychiatrists: From Institutional Psychiatry to the Counter-Culture, 1960-1971.
Oisín Wall (2017) The British Anti-Psychiatrists: From Institutional Psychiatry to the Counter-Culture, 1960-1971. London and New York: Routledge. [ Publisher's Version] [Details]

Book Chapters

  Year Publication
(2020) 'Obscuring Psychiatry: Basaglia and the British Anti-Psychiatrists'
Oisín Wall (2020) 'Obscuring Psychiatry: Basaglia and the British Anti-Psychiatrists' In: John Foot and Tom Burns (eds). Basaglia: From asylum to community, international experiences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [DOI] [Details]
(2019) 'Hearing Distant Voices: Psychiatry, Asylums and the Limits of History'
Oisín Wall (2019) 'Hearing Distant Voices: Psychiatry, Asylums and the Limits of History' In: Natasha McEnroe (eds). Medicine: An Imperfect Science. London: Scala. [Details]

Peer Reviewed Journals

  Year Publication
(2023) '“It Has Made Me Think”: Engaging the Public with the History of Health in the Modern Irish Prison'
Catherine Cox and Oisín Wall (2023) '“It Has Made Me Think”: Engaging the Public with the History of Health in the Modern Irish Prison'. Journal of Medical Humanities, [Details]
(2021) 'From ‘Opium Smoking Orgies’ to ‘Junkie Babies’: Representations of Heroin-Use in Ireland, 1915-90'
Oisín Wall and James Grannell (2021) 'From ‘Opium Smoking Orgies’ to ‘Junkie Babies’: Representations of Heroin-Use in Ireland, 1915-90'. Cultural and Social History: The Journal of the Social History Society, [Details]
(2019) 'Living Inside: Displaying difficult subjects and working with academic institutions'
Oisín Wall and Brian Crowley (2019) 'Living Inside: Displaying difficult subjects and working with academic institutions'. 26 :22-26 [Details]
(2019) '‘Embarrassing the State’: The ‘Ordinary’ Prisoner Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–6'
Oisín Wall (2019) '‘Embarrassing the State’: The ‘Ordinary’ Prisoner Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–6'. Journal of Contemporary History, 55 (2):388-410 [DOI] [Details]
(2017) 'The birth and death of Villa 21'
Oisín Wall (2017) 'The birth and death of Villa 21'. History Of Psychiatry, 24 (3):326-340 [Details]

Professional Associations

  Association Function From / To
Royal Historical Society Fellow 30-SEP-21 /
Society for the SocialHistory of Medicine Gazette Editor 01-SEP-22 /

Committees

  Committee Function From / To
Society for the Social History of Medicine Executive committee member 2022 / 2026

Employment

  Employer Position From / To
Science Museum Research Curator of Medicine 01-MAR-15 / 26-JAN-18
University College Dublin Postdoctoral Research Fellow 29-JAN-18 / 30-SEP-21
University College Dublin Wellcome Research Fellow 01-NOV-21 /
University College Cork Lecturer in Radical Humanities 01-SEP-22 /

Education

  Year Institution Qualification Subject
2008 University College Cork BA History and Philosophy
2014 King's College London PhD History
2009 Birkbeck College London/ London Consortium MRes Humanities and Cultural Studies

Outreach Activities

  Description

This gallery explored stories from the history of medicine through objects from the Wellcome and Science Museum's medicine collections.

This exhibition told the stories of six ordinary people whose lives were entwined with the history of prison reform in Ireland.

I co-curated this permanent gallery which explores how medicine shapes, and is shaped by, communities.

Teaching Interests

I teach contemporary Irish history and the histories of marginalised communities, particularly people who have been incarcerated.

Research supervision:
  • I am interested in supervising research related to marginalised communities in 20th century Ireland, for instance:
    • People who are, or have been, incarcerated
    • People who use drugs
    • Communities of sex workers
    • LGBTQI+ communities
    • The Traveller community
  • I am also interested in supervising histories of medicine, including psychiatry.