Past Lives: New Women’s Histories

Library Exhibition

Mary Clancy, Global Women’s Studies & School of Political Science & Sociology

This exhibition aims to highlight the possibilities of women’s history and to recognise the effort of past students of the university through an exhibition of their publications held in the library. This group of women was among the first to enter university in the decades after 1879, the year that university education was legally open to women. The first woman student to sit for a degree in Galway, Bessie Anderson, graduated in 1888.  The majority of the women students of this era won academic scholarships and prizes, undertook postgraduate studies in Ireland and Europe, were active in various social, political and feminist organisations and achieved prominence within their fields, nationally and internationally.

 

The exhibition is a project of The Centre for Global Women’s Studies, School of Political Science and Sociology; Art and Archives in the West of Ireland and Explore, in association with Special Collections, NUI, Galway. The Exhibition is part of a larger forthcoming research project.

Exhibition research: Mary Clancy. Library Research: Marie Boran. Library Exhibition Assistance: Kathleen Burke. Student Exhibition Assistance: Nuala Gaffney.

Acknowledgements: Gillian Browne, Anne Byrne, Kat Castillo, Caitríona Clear, Ray Conlon, Frank D’Arcy, Margo Donohue, Erin Grant, Kieran Hoare, Margaret Hughes, Mary McGill, Niamh Reilly, Amber Walsh-Olesen.