Ciara Breathnach is Professor of Irish Gender History at University College Cork. She has published widely on Irish socio-economic, gender, cultural and health history. Her most recent monograph Absence in the Archives was published with Cambridge University Press, 2026. Her last monograph Ordinary lives, death and social class: Dublin City Coroner’s Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford University Press, 2022) won the American Conference of Irish Studies, James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences in 2023. 

She is Vice Chair of a European funded COST Action CA22116 The Great Leap. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Health Inequalities, 1800-2022. Breathnach has held 10 international fellowships including a Fulbright at New York University (2022), at Harvard University (2014, and more recently at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford (2023/24). She has served as a member of Heritage Council (2012-2016), the Board of the National Library (2015-2020), the Irish Manuscripts Commission (2017-2027), National Archives Advisory Council (2017-2022), and the Dictionary of Irish Biography (2020-). Breathnach has an excellent track record of grant capture and has won over 2 million Euro in direct project funding since 2007. She has been instrumental in the capture of a further 1.4 million for community and other academic work. Her work with documentary makers, and national cultural institutions extends her research impact well beyond the academy.

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2018-2023: €598,690, Irish Research Council Laureate Award, Death and Burial Data: Ireland 1864-1922.

2020: €15,000 Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Decade of Centenary funding for Open Access publication.

2016: £5,152 in 2016 c €6,000 CRF/RSE European Visiting Research Fellowships, Royal Society Edinburgh, with Professor Oonagh Walsh, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, UK.

2016: €9,875, Irish Research Council, New Foundations, Incarcerated Bodies: hunger striking and internment, 1912-1923, Exhibition and symposium funding.

2014: €4,400, Wellcome Trust, Small project Grant, Gender Medicine and the Body, conference support.

2013: €327,182, Irish Research Council, Research Project Grant 3, Interdisciplinary Award, Irish Record Linkage, 1864-1913.

2012: €5,801, IRC, New Foundations, Co-PI with Professor Eunan O’Halpin, TCD, Irish death indices, 1864-1971: the challenge of embedded anomalies for engaged humanities.

2012: €11,700, Wellcome Trust, with Prof. Oonagh Walsh, Association of Medical Humanities Conference support, UCC.

2010: €57,000, Principal Investigator, IRC, Research Development Initiative.

2007-2010: €615,000, Ireland Funds, History of Family Project.

2008: €97,000 with Prof Anthony McElligott, IRC, Research Development Initiative.

2007: €65,000, Higher Education Authority, Strategic Innovation Funds.