Histories of Religious Identity and the Irish

Researching medieval women necessitates the study of religion-both religious practice and religious identity. While sources may be limited for individual faith and religious practice, there remains ample evidence for the importance of religious identity shaping the lives of medieval religious women. While finding religious women in the sources from medieval Ireland was an important early project in my career, my later research into how gender formed understanding and memory of religious violence has provided more nuanced analysis of the role of religion in the lives of Irish people in the past. The reach of Irish religious history has proved to belong and the conflicts over religious identity from Ireland continued to inform how Irish migrants and their children understood their new home sin Australia.