Dr Jonathan Wright

History

Lecturer

Rhetoric House
41
(01) 474 7108

Biography

Dr Jonathan Wright joined the Department of History at Maynooth in 2014, and lectures in British and Irish History.  He holds degrees from Durham University, the University of Aberdeen and Queen’s University, Belfast. Prior to joining the Department of History he held an IRCHSS-funded postdoctoral research fellowship at Trinity College Dublin (2012-2012) and was employed as a research fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast (2012-2014).

A historian of the long eighteenth century, Dr Wright has three main research interests: politics and political cultures in the age of revolution and reform (c.1789-1832); Irish connections with empire (with a particular emphasis on the Atlantic World and on the province of Ulster and its relations with the Caribbean and with slavery); and Irish urban history (with particular reference to late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Belfast). His current writing and editing projects include a study of nocturnal criminality in late-Georgian Belfast, using the night watch records of 1812 and 1816; an edited collection of essays on representations of Belfast’s past; and a study reconstructing the story of enslaved boy, brought to Ulster in the mid-eighteenth century.

Dr Wright is a member of the editorial board of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas and a member of the committee of the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland, and he serves as reviews editor for the latter society’s journal, Irish Economic and Social History.

Book

Year Publication
2020 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2020) Crime and Punishment in nineteenth-century Belfast: the story of John Linn. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
2019 Daniel Sanjiv Roberts and Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (eds) (2019) Ireland's imperial connections, 1775-1947. Cham: Palgrave.
2019 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (ed) (2019) An Ulster slave-owner in the Revolutionary Atlantic: the life and letters of John Black. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
2018 Georgina Laragy, Olwen Purdue and Jonathan Jeffrrey Wright (eds) (2018) Urban spaces in nineteenth-century Ireland. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
2015 Finnegan, Diarmid A. and Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (eds) (2015) Spaces of global knowledge: exhibition, encounter and exchange in an age of empire. : Ashgate.
2012 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2012) The natural leaders and their world: politics, culture and society in Belfast, c. 1801-32. : Liverpool University Press.

Book Chapter

Year Publication
2023 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2023) ''Frustrated ambition in the eighteenth-century Atlantic: Robert Tennent in Jamaica, c. 1784-1795' In: Speculative Minds in Georgian Ireland Novelty, experiment and widening horizons. Dublin : Four Courts Press.
2022 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2022) '''Idle castle building airy schemes': John Black III and the improvement of eighteenth-century Belfast'' In: Politics and political culture in Ireland from restoration to union. Dublin : Four Courts Press.
2022 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2022) ''From New Orleans to Clifton Street: slavery and freedom in nineteenth-century Belfast'' In: The first great charity of this town: Belfast Charitable Society and its role in the developing city. Dublin : Four Courts Press.
2021 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2021) 'The Indian and the spy: a story of empire from 1640s Ireland' In: The historian as detective: uncovering Ireland's pasts. Dublin : Four Courts Press.
2019 Daniel Sanjiv Roberts and Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2019) ''Introduction'' In: Ireland's imperial connections, 1775-1947. Cham : Palgrave.
2019 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2019) ''Four weddings, two funerals and a divorce: or, the lives and loves of the Tennent family’' In: Marriage and the Irish: a miscellany. Dublin : Wordwell.
2016 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2016) '‘Stranger than fiction: the story of John “Lippy” Linn’' In: Death and the Irish: a miscellany. Dublin : Wordwell.
2015 Finnegan, DA; Wright, JJ (2015) 'Placing Global Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century' In: SPACES OF GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE: EXHIBITION, ENCOUNTER AND EXCHANGE IN AN AGE OF EMPIRE. ALDERSHOT : ASHGATE PUBLISHING LTD.
2019 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2019) ''A work purely local?: Narratives of empire in George Benn's A history of the town of Belfast'' In: Ireland's imperial connections, 1775-1947. Cham : Palgrave.
2018 Olwen Purdue and Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2018) ''Introduction'' In: Urban spaces in nineteenth-century Ireland. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press.
2018 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2018) '''The Donegalls' backside': Donegall Place, the White Linen Hall and the development of space and place in nineteenth-century Belfast'' In: Urban spaces in nineteenth-century Ireland. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press.
2016 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright (2016) '‘Love loss and learning in late-Georgian Belfast: the case of Eliza McCracken’' In: Ourselves alone? Religion, society and politics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland. Dublin : Four Courts Press.
2015 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2015) 'A depot for the productions of the four quarters of the globe: empire, collecting and the Belfast Museum' In: Finnegan, Diarmid A. and Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey(Eds.). Spaces of global knowledge: exhibition, encounter and exchange in an age of empire. Farnham : Ashgate.
2015 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2015) '‘Robert Hyndman’s toe: romanticism, schoolboy politics and the affective revolution in late Georgian Belfast’ ' In: Cox, Catherine and Riordan, Susannah(Eds.). Adolescence in modern Irish history: innocence and experience . Basingstoke : Palgrave.
2014 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2014) '‘“The perverted graduates of Oxford”: priestcraft, “political Popery” and the transnational anti-Catholicism of Sir James Emerson Tennent’' In: Whelehan, Niall(Eds.). Transnational perspectives in modern Irish history: beyond the island. London : Routledge.

Peer Reviewed Journal

Year Publication
2018 Jonathan Jeffrey Wright and Diarmid A. Finnegan (2018) ''Rocks, Skulls and Materialism: Geology and Phrenology in Late-Georgian Belfast''. Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 72 :25-55. [Full-Text]
2015 Finnegan, Diarmid A. and Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2015) 'Catholics, science and civic culture in Victorian Belfast'. The British Journal for the History of Science, xlviii . [Full-Text]
2014 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2014) 'An Anglo-Irish radical in the late-Georgian metropolis: Peter Finnerty and the politics of contempt'. Journal of British Studies, liii . [Full-Text]
2013 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2013) '‘The Belfast chameleon: Ulster, Ceylon and the imperial life of Sir James Emerson Tennent’'. BRITAIN AND THE WORLD: HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SCHOLAR SOCIETY, vi . [Full-Text]
2008 Wright, Jonathan Jeffrey (2008) 'Steadfast supporters of the British connection? Belfast Presbyterians and the act of Union, c. 1798-1840'. Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, i . [Full-Text]
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