The Munster Women Writers Project was one of the first Digital Humanities projects to be undertaken in Ireland. A literature and bibliographic research project, it was part of the three-strand Women in Irish Society: Understanding the Past and Present through Social Research and Archives. Women in Irish Society (WISP) took a collaborative approach to research and involved staff from three academic departments in University College Cork – Applied Social Studies, English and Sociology. WISP received a significant research grant from the Higher Education Authority under the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI 1) in 1999 and was officially launched in February 2000.
Note: I am currently undertaking a pilot project to make the data from the Munster Women Writers Project available online again. A work-in-progress, it can be accessed here http://munsterwomenwriters.joanofarchives.com/
One strand of the Women in Irish Society Project Irish Women at Work: An Oral History Project can now be accessed via the DRI website. The collection includes 42 oral history interviews focused on the working lives of Irish women between 1930 and 1960, living in three Munster counties – Cork, Kerry and Limerick. The women’s accounts are woven into the broader narratives of their lives extending from childhood to adulthood and old age. The collection includes audio and image files and is available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
The third strand of WISP undertook a critical analysis of feminism in Ireland, taking as its starting point the archival materials from the Irish Women’s Movement, held in the collections of UCC’s Boole Library. The output of this research formed the basis of the book Documenting Irish Feminisms: The Second Wave, published in 2005 by Arlen House.
Bibliography
Kiely, Elizabeth, & Leane, Máire. (2017) Irish Women at Work Oral History Project, Digital Repository of Ireland [Distributor], University College Cork [Depositing Institution], https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.h9904j002
