Maeve O'Riordan is lecturer in women's and cultural history at the School of History. She is interested particularly in nineteenth and twentieth century social history, women's history, country house studies and material culture. Maeve has maintained her interest in gender equality in higher education and has worked in the Higher Education Authority, the Irish Research Council and Women's Studies at UCC since completing her PhD. She won an Irish Research Council Scholarship for her PhD in UCC in 2010 and for her postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at Maynooth University in 2014.

My research is focused on Irish gender history, and women's history particularly focused on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have written a detailed study on women of the Big House during this period (Liverpool University Press, 2018). At the same time, I curated a multimedia exhibition on the women of Airfield house; a suburban villa in Dublin. My focus on privileged women has permitted me access to personal archival material. I have a background in Art History as well as history which informs my interest in art and fashion. I am interested in broader issues of family and culture, as demonstrated by my current research project. I am in favour of a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to research. My most recent work has focused on establishing research networks across the humanities and social sciences, and across national boundaries to develop new approaches to research. Arising from my recent collaboration with Dr Leanne Calvert (University of Hertfordshire) I am co-editing a special issue on the Irish family.

I teach a range of modules on women's and cultural history. I currently coordinate or co-coordinate the following: HI1015 The Craft of HistoryHI1012 Women in Europe since 1800HI2110 Sex, Gender and Power in HistoryHI2105 Case Study: Researching the Big House and its peopleHI2050 HI3235 The Female Body and British Culture 1800-1918HI3001 Seminar: Women, Society and Class in Ireland, 1850 to 1980I also teach on the following modules: Postgraduate modules: MA Women’s Studies: Women and Society MA Local History MA History: Public History Undergraduate modules: HI1115: Irish History for International Students Women in Post-famine IrelandCurrent PhD students: Shannon Freegrove (IRC funded). (co-supervised with Dr John Borgonovo). Maurice Cronin. (co-supervised with Drs Andrew McCarthy and Jérôme aan de Wiel).