By Judith Harford
Published in Women's History Review, January 2026.
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Abstract

This article explores the lives of Ireland’s first women professors, whose careers spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period marked by the international expansion of higher education for women, against the backdrop of wider social, economic and political change. Drawing on a range of sources, including university records, personal correspondence, and student testimonies, the article interrogates how these women navigated a university landscape built on male privilege and norms. Marginalised through an architecture of control, both spatial and ideological, the article reveals the strategies these women employed in order to gain an intellectual foothold and build an institutional presence.