In the last quarter century, Ireland has experienced dramatic political and economic change. This broad-ranging text provides an accessible and up-to-date introduction to Irish society, politics and culture, as well as developments in its economy and place in Europe and the world.

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This volume explores the cultural, literary, theatrical, and political changes in Irish society from 1980. The so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ brought about cultural and economic rejuvenation in Ireland but this new found confidence and prosperity was destabilised by other events, such as the scandals in the Catholic Church, bringing into question the role of traditional institutions in contemporary Irish life. The ending of the Troubles and signing of the Good Friday Agreement similarly heralded a new era in terms of positive political change, but recent paramilitary activity threatens to undermine the progress made in the 1990s, as waves of new violence hit the North. Equally, recent economic recession has halted the radical growth seen in the Republic over recent decades. This book therefore problematises the concept of change and progress by juxtaposing these events, and asking what real changes can be traced in modern Ireland. The contributors frequently reflect on the changes and upheavals this period of dramatic economic, political and cultural change has prompted. The volume includes contributions from the fields of politics, cultural studies, sport, history, geography, media and film studies, and theatre and literature. As such it is a decidedly interdisciplinary study, exploring wide-ranging topics and issues relevant to contemporary Irish Studies.

This book examines the surge of queer performance produced across Ireland since the first stirrings of the Celtic Tiger in the mid-1990s, up to the passing of the Marriage Equality referendum in the Republic in 2015.

This book investigates Ireland’s translation of interculturalism as social policy into aesthetic practice and situates the wider implications of this ‘new interculturalism’ for theatre and performance studies at large. Offering the first full-length, post-1990s study of the effect of large-scale immigration and interculturalism as social policy on Irish theatre and performance, McIvor argues that inward-migration changes most of what can be assumed about Irish theatre and performance and its relationship to national identity. By using case studies that include theatre, dance, photography, and activist actions, this book works through major debates over aesthetic interculturalism in theatre and performance studies post-1970s and analyses Irish social interculturalism in a contemporary European social and cultural policy context. Drawing together the work of professional and community practitioners who frequently identify as both artists and activists, Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland proposes a new paradigm for the study of Irish theatre and performance while contributing to the wider investigation of migration and performance.

During the past decade, Ireland’s economic growth has attracted international attention. This book analyses the consequences of that growth on housing and serves as a primer to other countries on the complexities of delivering sustainable housing solutions in the face of economic success. It introduces key housing developments and also reports on the findings of the latest research on the transformation of the sector in the past decade.

The period between c.1580 and c.1685 was one of momentous importance in terms of the establishment of different confessional identities in Ireland, as well as a time of significant migration and displacement of population. Confessionalism and Mobility in Early Modern Ireland provides an entirely new perspective on religious change in early modern Ireland by tracing the constant and ubiquitous impact of mobility on the development and maintenance of the island's competing confessional groupings. Confessionalism and Mobility in Early Modern Ireland examines the dialectic between migration and religious adherence, paying particular attention to the pronounced transnational dimension of clerical formation which played a vital role in shaping the competing Catholic, Church of Ireland, and non-conformist clergies. It demonstrates that the religious transformation of the island was mediated by individuals with very significant migratory experiences and the importance of religion in enabling individuals to negotiate the challenges and opportunities created by displacement and settlement in new environments. The volume investigates how more quotidian practices of mobility such as pilgrimage and inter-parochial communions helped to elaborate religious identities and analyses the extraordinary importance of migratory experience in shaping the lives and writings of the authors of key confessional identity texts. Confessionalism and Mobility in Early Modern Ireland demonstrates that Irish society was enormously influenced by migratory experiences and argues that a case study of the island also has important implications for understanding religious change in other areas of Europe and the rest of the world.

A New History of Ireland is the largest scholarly project in modern Irish history. In 9 volumes, it provides a comprehensive new synthesis of modern scholarship on every aspect of Irish history and prehistory, from the earliest geological and archaeological evidence, through the Middle Ages, down to the present day. The third volume opens with a character study of early modern Ireland and a panoramic survey of Ireland in 1534, followed by twelve chapters of narrative history. There are further chapters on the economy, the coinage, languages and literature, and the Irish abroad. Two surveys, `Land and People', c.1600 and c.1685, are included.

The focus of this book is to analyse from a number of perspectives the politics of change in Ireland north and south since 1969. The emergence of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the final push to gain entry to the EEC, changing social mores and severe economic difficulties all begin to appear on the horizon at this stage. While considerable change and, indeed, moments of extreme crisis, have taken place in areas such as Northern Ireland, the economy, moral politics, and Ireland’s attitude towards the European Union, continuity has also been a significant hallmark of Irish politics since 1969. This volume offers important perspectives and opens up new debates in explaining the phenomena of continuity, change and crisis in contemporary Ireland. New evidence on the origins of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Arms Crisis, Ireland’s relationship with Europe, the process of social partnership, and the politics of morality all offer important fresh insights into how contemporary Ireland has functioned. Featuring a number of high profile scholars and uniquely dealing with both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, this volume argues that the intriguing feature of recent Irish history is not the absence of change but the extent to which change has been mediated by the existing political cultures, national traditions and long-standing institutions of both north and south. This book was based on a special issue of Irish Political Studies.

As Ireland made the transition from a rural to a post-industrial society from the 1970s onwards, Irish women developed a significant political voice. Long excluded from participation in the civic arena, they organised to make new, challenging and specific demands on government. The relationship between feminist representatives and political decision makers is at the core of this book. It shows how Irish women developed the political skills required to represent women's interests to government effectively, and finds that the political activity of the women's movement in the Republic of Ireland contributed to the dismantling of a range of discriminatory policies against women. Galligan discusses the compromises made by both sides as the political system slowly moved to accomodate the feminist agenda. In doing so, she explores the dynamics of Irish politics from a different, yet complementary, perspective from the institutional approach which characterizes other studies of the Irish political system. This book clearly marks the significant points in the creation of a more woman-friendly society in Ireland from the 1970s to the present day. It is the story of women's rights in contemporary Ireland.