The Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies in conjunction with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland would be delighted to welcome you to our upcoming presentation by Dr Peter Leary, Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow, Oxford Brookes University. 

The battered body of Martha Teresa Lunney was discovered on the morning of 29 March 1923, about three yards from the boundary between Counties Cavan and Fermanagh, recently transformed into a border between two states. No killer was ever found. This horrific murder and the failure to solve the crime can best be understood through a reconstruction of some of the dynamics of Irish partition as it unfolded within this small community. Doing so can deepen our understanding both of the intimate nature of the violence that surrounded the establishment of the border and of the partial and selective ways in which it came to be remembered and forgotten. This talk will refer to injuries resulting from sexual and other violence.

Peter Leary is a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in History at Oxford Brookes University. After completing his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast he was the Canon Murray Fellow in Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. He is the author of Unapproved routes: histories of the Irish border, 1922–72 (Oxford University Press, 2016), winner of the American Conference for Irish Studies Donald Murphy Prize and shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize and the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize.

This event is taking place on Zoom. Registration closes one hour before the event and an invite link will be sent to everyone registered one hour before the beginning of the event.