Stair: An Irish Public History Company
Who we are
Stair historical consultancy provides finished content, tailored to each client’s needs. Our research is of the highest academic standards, and reflects the most exciting, innovative developments in contemporary history.
Dr. Anne Mac Lellan
Dr. Edel Bhreathnach
Niamh brings historical art and architecture expertise and flair to Stair. She holds a Ph.D from the Trinity College Dublin (Department of History of Art and Architecture), where she was an Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) Doctoral Fellow. She has lectured and written on various aspects of Irish art and architecture, in particular on the post-medieval life and uses of Irish Gothic buildings, and on modern and contemporary visual art and architecture. She is a researcher on the Monastic Ireland project, based at the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation, UCD, which is constructing a database of images and information on Ireland's late medieval heritage. This project will be accessibly for tourists, and will also have a research portal for scholars. Monastic Ireland is supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Fáilte Ireland, The South-Western Regional Authority and Heritage Island. Niamh has a diversity of talents and recently curated a retrospective exhibition on the work of Mayo-born artist, Owen Walsh (1933 - 2002). She is working on another exhibition, Shaping Identities Together, which will form a part of the cultural calendar during Ireland’s 2013 EU presidency. Niamh has a talent for communication, both written and spoken, and welcomes opportunities to take part in teaching and outreach projects in both school and community settings.
Edel is a passionate and informed historian with extensive publications, project management experience and a professional grounding in diplomacy. She has worked on many topics in early and late medieval Irish history including Tara, Co Meath (Ireland’s premier royal complex and landscape), the intellectual history of medieval Ireland, landscape surveys and the friars in the vernacular tradition. Following her engagement with the exciting Government-funded historical and archaeological collaboration, Discovery Ireland (1992-2000), Edel wrote Tara: a select bibliography and edited The kingship and landscape of Tara (Dublin, 2005). The Discovery project has become a model for many other inter-disciplinary projects in Ireland and Britain and the original team continues to work on Tara in collaboration experts in a range of different disciplines.
Edel is co-editor of The Irish Franciscans 1534-1990 (Dublin, 2009), and of The landscape of kingship and cult: text and archaeology (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2011). A large part of Edel’s mission as a historian is to reach out to fellow academics and to the public, creating academic networks that span the globe. Formerly a career diplomat, Edel lectures in UCD and was appointed Acting Internal Examiner for DPhil by History Faculty, University of Oxford in 2011. Her interests extend to the communication of history and landscape through modern media, the development of a dynamic policy for the humanities in Ireland, the creation of an effective bridge between the humanities and sciences in Ireland and extending philanthropy to the arts and culture in Ireland
Anne has a strong interest in the social and cultural history of Ireland in the twentieth century with a particular enthusiasm for the history of medicine, health and science. She is the winner of the Royal College of Physicians 2012 History of Medicine Research Award and the joint winner of the Ulster University/Centre for the History of Medicine’s History of Medicine in Ireland essay prize, 2011. Anne’s PhD, from the UCD School of History and Archives, was funded by Wellcome Trust.
She enjoys making history accessible to audiences beyond the academic and is currently writing a biography of Dr Dorothy Stopford Price, a medical doctor who was pivotal in the battle against tuberculosis in the mid-twentieth century. In addition to her historical skills portfolio, Anne brings a wide experience of working in Irish print and broadcast media to this co-operative. Previously, she was an Irish Times staff journalist specialising in education. She has also worked as a freelance researcher for RTE Radio One and her work has been published in a range of Irish newspapers, journals and magazines. In another life, she was a biomedical scientist working in microbiology laboratories in a number of Irish hospitals. She is currently Director of Research and Academic Affairs at the Rotunda Hospital (the world’s oldest working maternity hospital), Dublin and lectures part-time on the history of medicine and medical devices in the National College of Art and Design.
Dr. Niamh Nic Ghabhann