elizabeth Fitzpatrick

Senior Lecturer 

Biography

Dr Elizabeth FitzPatrick is a senior lecturer (2007) in Archaeology. She received her PhD from Trinity College Dublin (1997). Before joining NUI, Galway in 1997 she worked with the Carroll Institute, London and with the Archaeological Survey of Ireland. She is archaeology editor of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy and a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Her research focus is medieval and early modern Gaelic peoples, with particular reference to their expressions of cultural and social identity in landscape, landholding and settlement and in everyday and specialised material culture.  Her areas of investigation and those of her post-graduate student research team include reconstructing historical landscapes, household and ritual objects in native society, settlement norms and nucleation in traditional polities, assembly places and meeting culture in the lordships of Ireland and Scotland, the environment of the hereditary arts and learned families, funerary monuments of the Gaelic European diaspora, and the church in Gaelic Ireland.
Linking her research directly to her teaching, she has directed twenty weeks of Royal Irish Academy sponsored archaeological excavation as summer field schools (2001, 2007, 2008, 2010) for graduate and undergraduate students. Recent publications include Aughris headland for the 2nd edition of the Atlas of the Irish rural landscape (2011), and the first special issue of Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C on Domestic life in Ireland (2011). Her paper on native enclosed settlement and the problem of the Irish ’ring-fort’, published in Medieval Archaeology (2009), was runner-up in the Society of Medieval Archaeology, London, Martyn Jope Award.

Office ARC212, School of Geography and Archaeology, Arts/Science Building, NUI, Galway
Tel 091 492670
Fax 091 525700
E-mail elizabeth.fitzpatricknuigalway.ie

Awards & fellowships

• Government of Ireland Research Fellow, IRCHSS Fellowships in the Humanities and Social Sciences 2006
• Bilateral Cultural Agreement Travel Bursary, Rome 2003-4
• British Academy/Royal Irish Academy Exchange Scholarship, Aberdeen 1997
• Hynes Award for Archaeology, UCG 1980

Professional Membership

• Fellow, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
• Member, Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland
• Member, Group for the Study of Irish Historic Settlement
• Member, Medieval Settlement Research Group, Cambridge
• Member, International Seminar on Urban Form
• Member, Assembly Group, Institute of Archaeology, Reykjavik

Current professional activities

• Archaeology editor Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 2007 – present        
• Reader, Four Courts Press, 2011

Current community service       

• Committee member, Galway City Museum Advisory Group, 2008 – present

Institute / centre affiliations

• Irish Environmental History Network, Trinity College Dublin
• Moore Institute, NUI, Galway
• Centre for Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, NUI, Galway

Teaching             

• AR325 Minor Dissertation in Archaeology (3BA)
• AR345 Gaelic and Colonial Society and Settlement 1350–1550 (3BA)
• AR243 The Making of Urban Landscapes (2BA)
• AR247 Archaeology of the Medieval Irish Church (2BA)
• AR115 Celts, Vikings and Normans (1BA)
• Module B Interpreting Landscapes ( MA in Landscape Archaeology)
• MA in Medieval Studies

Administration

• Member, School Research Committee
• Chair, Graduate Research Committee, Archaeology
• 2BA coordinator, student advisor and examinations officer
• Higher Diploma coordinator

Research

• Medieval and early modern Gaelic civilisation
• Cultural landscapes of historical Ireland
• Assembly culture in Ireland and medieval Europe
• Urban settlement in traditional societies
• Churches in their landscapes

Current writing projects

• San Pietro in Montorio and the exilic landscape of the Gaelic Irish in early seventeenth-century Rome
• Excavations at Cahermacnaghten – landscape and settlement in the landholding of a Gaelic learned family
• The Environment of the Hereditary Arts and their Keepers in the Gaelic World, c. 1200–1650
• An Archaeology of Gaelic Ireland (text book)

Current Graduate Supervision

PhD

• Eve Campbell (PhD4; IRCHSS Scholar) Displacement and relocation in early modern Ireland: studies of transplantation settlements in Connacht and Clare.
• Richard Clutterbuck (PhD2; IRCHSS Scholar) Evolution of Irish rural landscapes 1650 to 1850
• Elizabeth Gray (PhD1; Galway Research Fellow) High- Status Drinking Ritual in Medieval and Early Modern Gaelic Ireland and Scotland.
• Richard Gray (PhD1) The parish village in Ireland, 1200–1600
• Enda O’Flaherty (PhD4; Galway Research Fellow) Settlement, economy and seasonal flooding in historical Ireland.
• Yvonne McDermott (PhD4 part-time) Patronage and observance: the Franciscans and Dominicans in the lordships of Mac Uilliam Uachtair and Mac Uilliam Íochtair.

Completed PhDs

• Christy Cunniffe (2010) Clonfert: genesis, development and decline of a Gaelic cathedral settlement
• Siobhán McDermott (2010; IRCHSS Scholar) Negotiating the colonial process: settlement and society in Truagh, County Monaghan c. 1591–1800
• Paul Naessens (2009; IRCHSS Scholar) The Uí Fhlaithbheartaigh Gaelic lordship of Iarchonnacht: medieval lordly settlement on the Atlantic seaboard
• James McKeon (2008; IRCHSS Scholar) Anglo-Norman frontier urban settlement in the Plantagenet realm: studies from south Connacht
• Diarmuid Ó Seaneachain (2006; IRCHSS Scholar) English plantation settlement and the lost indigenous landscapes of Ulster and Chesapeake Bay in the sixteenth century   

Accepting Graduate research students in the following areas:

• Cultural landscapes of historical Ireland
• Gaelic and colonial Ireland
• Assembly culture in Ireland and medieval Europe
• Churches in their landscapes

Publications

Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications

• 2011 Aughris Headland. In F.H. A. Aalen, K. Whelan and M. Stout (eds.), Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, 352-67. 2^nd ed.  Cork University Press.
• 2011 (with E. Murphy et.al) Evoking the white mare: the cult landscape of Sgiath Gabhra and its medieval perception in Gaelic Fir Mhanach. In R. Schot, C. Newman and E. Bhreathnach (eds), Landscapes of cult and kingship, 163-91 . Conference Proceedings, Four Courts Press, Dublin.
• 2011 (with James Kelly) Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 111C: Domestic life in Ireland. pp. 336. Special issue. Dublin.
• 2009 Native enclosed settlement and the problem of the Irish ’ring-fort’. Medieval Archaeology 53, 271-307.
• 2007 Interpreting a cultural landscape: a case for seaweed-harvesting at Aughris, Co. Sligo. Journal of Irish Archaeology 16, 11-33.

Link to Extended Publications List

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