Dr Alison FitzGerald
Biography
Dr Alison FitzGerald is an Associate Professor in the Department of History. Her research interests include the history of collecting, retailing and leisure. Her monograph Silver in Georgian Dublin, making, selling, consuming was published by Routledge in 2016 (hardback) and 2019 (paperback). Dr. FitzGerald is a graduate of University College Dublin (BA, MA) and the Royal College of Art, London (PhD). She is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Irish Georgian Society, Irish Research Council (IRC), Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, University College Dublin and Yale University.
Dr FitzGerald is a Director of the Castletown Foundation, an charitable educational trust to manage and conserve for future generations Castletown, Ireland’s most significant Palladian house and its important collections of Irish Georgian paintings and furniture. She is also a member of the editorial board of Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, the Journal of the Irish Georgian Society, and a member of the antique plate committee of the Company of Goldsmiths of Dublin, the last surviving trade guild in the city. Her current research project focuses on commercial recreation in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland, from automata and popular science to menageries and human exhibits.
Dr FitzGerald is a Director of the Castletown Foundation, an charitable educational trust to manage and conserve for future generations Castletown, Ireland’s most significant Palladian house and its important collections of Irish Georgian paintings and furniture. She is also a member of the editorial board of Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, the Journal of the Irish Georgian Society, and a member of the antique plate committee of the Company of Goldsmiths of Dublin, the last surviving trade guild in the city. Her current research project focuses on commercial recreation in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland, from automata and popular science to menageries and human exhibits.
Research Interests
Dr FitzGerald is an historian of material culture, the relationship between people and things. Her research is concerned with the way in which objects can be mined as historical evidence, to shed light on the individuals and groups who made, bought, used, valued, discarded, or even destroyed them. Her work to date has focused mainly on Irish material culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the context of developments in the British Atlantic world. Specifically, it deals with the history of collecting, guilds, leisure, retailing and urban history; a particular area of expertise is the history of Irish silver. In 2016, she published the monograph Silver in Georgian Dublin: making, selling consuming (Routledge) which explores the intricacies of one of Dublin’s most significant trades during a period of unprecedented competition and expansion in the market for luxury goods.
Dr FitzGerald has contributed to major exhibitions nationally and internationally as a decorative arts specialist. She had a significant role in the seminal exhibition Ireland Crossroads of Art and Design 1690-1840, held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Presenting over 300 objects drawn from public and private collections across North America, it attracted more than 100,000 visitors during the opening weeks, and was the first international exhibition celebrating the Irish as artists, collectors and patrons over a period of 150 years. Dr FitzGerald advised the curatorial team on potential loans, contributed to the exhibition catalogue, published by Yale University Press, and was an invited speaker at a symposium marking the opening of the exhibition. In 2017, she was commissioned by the National Gallery of Ireland to write an essay on the designs of the Victorian artist Frederic William Burton, to coincide with the Gallery’s retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work.
In terms of external engagement, Dr FitzGerald’s research on Irish design history & decorative arts has resulted in various professional consultancies and public service activities. In 2016, she joined the Board of Directors of the Castletown Foundation, a charitable educational trust which works in partnership with the Office of Public Works to manage and conserve Ireland’s most significant Palladian house and its important collections of paintings and decorative arts. In 2017, she was appointed to a panel of advisors to the Heritage Council and charged with assessing the historical significance of silver artefacts proposed as potential Heritage Donations to national and regional collections in Ireland. In 2018 she organised a symposium, in partnership with the National Museum of Ireland and the Irish Georgian Society, to mark the 21st anniversary of the opening of the silver galleries at the National Museum of Ireland; a book arising from this symposium, edited by Dr FitzGerald and including chapters by three of her recent postgraduates will be published in 2020.
Dr FitzGerald's current major research project builds on her research into the history of Georgian Ireland, but focuses on a new and under-researched area: the history of recreation and leisure. While the history of sport and theatre have received scholarly attention, there has been no systematic analysis of the range of commercial entertainments that distinguished urban life in Ireland, particularly from the eighteenth century onwards. These included automata, circuses, exotic animals, human exhibits, panoramas, scientific exhibits and waxworks. Provisionally entitled Spectacles and shows: exhibitions and entertainment in Ireland c.1750-c.1870, this project aims to address that lacuna. In 2017 she was awarded a fellowship by Yale University (Lewis Walpole Library) to carry out initial work for this project and is currently investigating the history of urban recreation, particularly commercial entertainment, in Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Peer Reviewed Journal
Book Chapter
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | FitzGerald, A. (2017) 'Frederic William Burton: crafting designs characteristic of Ireland' In: Frederic William Burton: for the love of art. Dublin : National Gallery of Ireland. | |
| 2015 | FitzGerald, A. (2015) 'A sterling trade: making and selling silver in Ireland' In: Ireland: crossroads of art & design, 1690-1840. London and New Haven : Yale University Press. | |
| 2012 | FitzGerald, A (2012) 'Fighting for a 'small provincial establishment': the Cork goldsmiths and their quest for a local assay office' In: Raymond Gillespie and R.F. Foster(Eds.). Irish provincial cultures in the long eighteenth century. Dublin : Four Courts Press. [Full-Text] |
Conference Publication
Conference Contribution
Book Review
Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2023) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.
Teaching Interests
Dr FitzGerald's teaches modules on material and visual culture, primarily in the early-modern period.
Current courses which she leads or contributes to include:
HY131: The Practice of History (7.5 credits)
HY132: Documents in History (7.5 credits)
Dr FitzGerald also contributes as a guest lecturer to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in other academic institutions including the National College of Art & Design, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin.
Current courses which she leads or contributes to include:
HY131: The Practice of History (7.5 credits)
HY132: Documents in History (7.5 credits)
HY233: Picturing the Renaissance (5 credits)
HY313: Art Design and Society in Seventeenth-Century Europe (5 credits)
HY278: Domestic Worlds: The Georgians at Home (5 credits)
HY355: The Business of Luxury: The Decorative Arts in Eighteenth-Century Europe (5 credits)
Dr FitzGerald also contributes as a guest lecturer to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in other academic institutions including the National College of Art & Design, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin.