Dr Karol Mullaney-Dignam

Profile

Dr Karol Mullaney-Dignam, BA, HDIH, PhD, completed her doctoral thesis in 2008 under the supervision of Professor R.V. Comerford at NUI Maynooth. Her thesis, ‘State, nation and music in independent Ireland 1922-51', examined the role of music in the creation of the Irish nation and the role of the newly independent state in directing developments in musical activity in Ireland. Karol has been affiliated with the CSHIHE since 2008 and is currently an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Her current research centres on social activity, particularly music and dancing, in the Irish country house. Her research project 'Music in the Irish country house' is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and is being conducted under the auspices of the Department of Music and the Department of History.
 

Publications

Monographs

• Music and dancing at Castletown, Co. Kildare, 1759-1821 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011).

Edited volume of essays

• [with Patrick Cosgrove and Terence Dooley] The rise and fall of an Irish aristocratic family: the FitzGeralds of Kildare (Dublin: UCD Press, forthcoming).

Journal articles

• ‘“Spacious and splendid”: music, dancing and social life at Glin Castle, 1781-1854’ in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, vol. xiv (2012), pp 16-37.

Essays in edited volumes

• ‘Tuning the mind: elite music-making, material culture and gender identity formation in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Jennifer Germann and Heidi Strobel (eds) Enlightened objects: essays on material culture and gender in eighteenth-century Europe (Ashgate Press, forthcoming).
• ‘“French horns playing at every meal”: music and sociability at Carton, 1747-1895’ in Patrick Cosgrove, Terence Dooley and Karol Mullaney-Dignam (eds), The rise and fall of an Irish aristocratic family: the FitzGeralds of Kildare (Dublin: UCD Press, forthcoming ).
• ‘The Music in the Irish Country House project: origins and objectives’ in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds), The Irish country house: its past, present and future (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), pp 166-183.
• ‘Forging a musical culture: state, nation and music in Ireland, 1922-1932’ in Tatjana Marković and Vesna Mikić (eds), Musical Culture and Memory: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of the Faculty of Music, University of Belgrade, Serbia (Belgrade: University of Belgrade Press, 2008), pp 76-83.

Works of reference

• Entries on ‘Feis Ceoil’ and ‘Tailteann Games’ in Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, forthcoming).

Reviews

• ‘Helen Berry, The castrato and his wife (Oxford, 2011)’ in Eighteenth-century Ireland (forthcoming).
•  ‘Patrick Walsh and A.P.W. Malcomson (eds), The Conolly Archive (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 2010)’ in Irish Archives, vol. 18 (2011), pp 59-61.

Conference papers

• ‘Nineteenth-century landed estate papers and Irish music history’. Symposium on Documents of Irish music history in the long nineteenth century: national and international contexts. Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick (28 April 2012).
• ‘Useless and extravagant? The consumption of music in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish country house’. Consuming the country house: from acquisition to presentation Conference, University of Northampton, UK (19 April 2012).
•  ‘Sources for the study of music in the Irish country house’. International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentations Centres (IAML) Annual Conference (27 July 2011).
• ‘Music and dancing at Carton: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’. Carton and the Fitzgeralds Conference, Carton House, Maynooth, Co. Kildare (29 August 2010)
• ‘Music and dancing at Castletown, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, 1759-1821’. Eighth Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference, NUI Maynooth (11 June 2010).
• ‘Representations of musical activity in the Retrospections of Dorothea Herbert (1770-1829)’. Women and Music in Ireland Conference 2010, NUI Maynooth (17 April 2010).
• ‘Music in the Irish Country House: an interdisciplinary research initiative’. Seventh Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference, NUI Maynooth (18 June 2009).
• ‘Challenging the future: The Music in the Irish Country House project’. Humanities challenging the future: An Foras Feasa and Department of Music & Creative Media, Dundalk Institute of Technology (9 June 2009).
•  ‘Trinity College Dublin and the Irish National Anthem, 1929’. Irish History Students’ Association (IHSA) Annual Conference, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland (10 March 2007).
• ‘The political context for and location of developments in musical activity, 1922-32’. New Directions in Music Studies: National Graduate Conference for Ethnomusicology, Music Faculty, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (7 July 2006).
• ‘Forging a musical culture: state, nation and music in Ireland, 1922-1932’. Musical culture and memory: Eighth International Symposium of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Faculty of Music, University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia (13April 2006).
• ‘The Irish army school of music, 1922-1926’. IHSA Annual Conference, University of Limerick (11 February 2006).

FORTHCOMING:

• ‘The musical life of Augustus Frederick FitzGerald (1791–1874), third duke of Leinster’. 10th Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Dundalk Institute of Technology (15-17 June 2012).
• ‘Rural recreations: leisure and the landed estate in nineteenth-century Ireland’. Leisure and the Irish in the nineteenth century Conference. Mater Dei College, Dublin City University (28-29 June 2012).
• ‘"No accomplishment so great for a lady": women and music in the Irish country house'. Women and Music in Ireland Conference 2012, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin (14-15 September 2012).

Seminar presentations

• ‘The significance of things: sources for the history of material culture in Ireland’. NUI Maynooth Certificate in Local History Seminar, Roscommon Vocational Eductional Committee, Strokestown House, Co. Roscommon (28 February 2012).
•  ‘Music in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish country house’. Music Department Research Seminar, National University of Ireland Maynooth (5 November 2010).
•  ‘The Music in the Irish Country House project: origins and objectives’. History Department Research Seminar, NUI Maynooth (14 October 2010).
•  ‘La Musica in Irlanda: una breve introduzione/Music in Ireland: a brief introduction’. Aspetti di alcune piccole regioni del mondo: International Ireland-Sicily Colloqium, NUI Maynooth (19 May 2009).
•  ‘The case of the Cork School of Music, 1923-30’. History Department Research Seminar, NUI Maynooth (7 April 2005).

Public lectures

• ‘Pleasing the neighbourhood: music and the country house in Georgian Ireland’. Irish Georgian Society Lecture, Royal Society of Antiquaries, Merrion Square, Dublin (3 April 2012).
•  ‘Entertaining the lower orders: music and merry-making on Irish landed estates in the nineteenth century’. Co. Roscommon Historical and Archaeological Society Meeting, Strokestown, Co. Roscommon (15 February 2012).
• ‘“The residence of true Irish hospitality”: social life at Castletown in the late eighteenth century’. CSHIHE-OPW Castletown Winter Lecture Series 2011-2012, Castletown, Celbridge, Co. Kildare (7 December 2011).
• ‘Revelry at Rockingham: the social lives of Irish landlords, 1800-1914’. Culture Night, King House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon (23 September 2011).
• ‘A history of musical activity at Glin Castle, Co. Limerick’. Irish Georgian Society Limerick Chapter Lecture, No. 1 Pery Square, Limerick (12 April 2011).
• ‘Music and dancing in the Irish country house in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’. Strokestown Park House Winter Lecture Series 2010-11, Strokestown Park House, Co. Roscommon (16 March 2011).
• ‘A brief history of musical activity at Castletown House’. CSHIHE-OPW Castletown Winter Lecture Series 2009-10, Castletown, Celbridge, Co. Kildare (10 March 2010).
• ‘Music in Ireland: an introduction’. Five-week public lecture series delivered at the County Museum, Dundalk, Co. Louth (February-March 2009).

FORTHCOMING:

• ‘“This charming place”: high society at Rockingham in the early 1900s’. Boyle Arts Festival 2012, Boyle, Co. Roscommon (4 Aug. 2012).

Conference, seminar & lecture co-organisation

• Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference, CSHIHE, NUI Maynooth. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
• CSHIHE-OPW Castletown Winter Lecture Series, Castletown House, Celbridge, Co. Kildare. Winter 2009-2010, 2010-2011, 2011-2012.
• CSHIHE-OPW Seminars on Policy, Management and Research in the Historic House Sector (in association with Yorkshire Country House Partnership). March 2009, April 2010.

Teaching

• 2011-2012: 'Heritage, cultural tourism and the historic house' (HY 647, MA in Historic House Studies Core Module), Dept of History, NUI Maynooth
• 2009-2010: ‘Historical skills for local history’ (LS 42, BA in Local Studies), Dept of History/ Dept of Adult Ed., NUI Maynooth
• 2009-2010: ‘The making of modern Irish society’ (SP 105, BSocSci), Dept of Applied Social Studies, NUI Maynooth
• 2008-2009: ‘Irish cultural nationalism, 1870-1949’ (LS 35,  BA in Local Studies), Depts of History/ Dept of Adult Ed., NUI Maynooth,
• 2005-2008: Educational Support Worker, Access Office, NUI Maynooth
• 2004-2007: Tutor, Department of History, NUI Maynooth

Affiliations/memberships

• Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) Ireland, Steering Committee Member and Minutes Secretary (2010‒present)
• Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI), Member (2010‒present)