Peter Hession | New York University (original) (raw)

I am the Assistant Professor Faculty Fellow in Irish History at Glucksman Ireland House, New York University.

I began my studies with a BA in History and Political Science from Trinity College Dublin, an M.Phil in Modern European History from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Modern Irish History also from the University of Cambridge.

My doctoral dissertation, entitled 'Social Authority and the Urban Environment in Nineteenth Century Cork' was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

To date, I have published work in the journals Urban History and Renewal and in edited collections by Syracuse University Press, Liverpool University Press, and Cork University Press. I have reviewed and peer-reviewed for the Historical Journal, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Family and Community History, the Irish Literary Supplement, and Urban History.

Following graduation, I was Visiting Fellow at the Irish College, Paris before moving on to the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool as Busteed Postdoctoral Fellow for 2018-19 and then to University College Dublin as the Newman Fellow in Irish History 2019-22.

In my latest project concerns the role of technology during the Great Irish Famine (1845-52), challenging the perceived ‘backwardness’ of 1840s Ireland while offering a new approach to the issues of culpability and intention which continue to dominate scholarly debate. By examining new and innovative technologies of exchange (i.e. rail, steam, road infrastructure) as well as those of relief (i.e. vats, mills, scales), my research seeks to investigate how the crisis of scarcity experienced in Ireland can be explained as much in terms of technical ‘competence’ as ecological breakdown. The project traces how these technologies both weakened and strengthened access to food, functioning in the ‘grey zone’ between the ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ contexts in which they operated.

Outside of academia, I have worked as a speechwriter, press officer, and political analyst for the European Commission in Brussels and London.
Address: https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/Peter-Hession.html
Glucksman Ireland House, New York University

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