A Dublin Festival of History talk - Alice Stopford Green’s Last Years and the Women of Deansgrange Cemetery

The objectives and radical practices of Ireland's revolutionary generation continued to exert palpable pressure within the confines of the compromised new state. This talk explores the divergent responses and trajectories of some of the women whose continued presence might be understood as a kind of haunting — a reminder to the public of the histories and alternative futures that had been abandoned.

Alice Stopford Green was one of these women. As a historian and public intellectual, she had constructed a historical narrative for a nation in waiting; as a senator in the Irish Free State, she found herself forced to subordinate her vision of how that story should end. Other women redirected their energies in different ways. This illustrated talk explores some of their experiences and challenges, retrieving the post-treaty histories of a number of these women who now rest in Deansgrange Cemetery.

Organised by the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Heritage Office with funding from the Heritage Council, this lecture will be delivered jointly by Angus Mitchell (Royal Irish Academy Commemorations Bursary 2025/26) & Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin (University of Limerick).

Description supplied by the event organiser.