Participant Info
- First Name
- Elaine
- Last Name
- Sisson
- Country
- Ireland
- State
- elaine.sisson@iadt.ie
- Affiliation
- Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dublin
- Website URL
- http://www.iadt.ie/about/staff/elaine-sisson
- Keywords
- Cultural Historian, 19c and 20c Irish history, modernism, visual culture, material culture, theatre, set and costume design, Irish Free State, radicalism, experiment, bohemianism
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- Currently on research leave until September 2018. Contact via email but may take a few days to get back to you.
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am a cultural historian and Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture in teh Department of Design and Visual Arts at IADT, Dublin where I co-ordinate the BA Design for Stage and Screen. I have broadcast and published widely on Irish visual and material culture of the late 19th and early 20th century including the book Pearse’s Patriots: The Cult of Boyhood at St. Enda’s (Cork UP, 2005) and, with Dr Linda King, the first comprehensive collection of essays on Irish design history: Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity 1922-1992. (Cork UP, 2011.) My current research interests are in the culture and history of the Irish Free State period (1922-1937) and I am writing a book on experiment and bohemian counter-culture in Dublin during this period. Much of my work involves looking at avant-garde set and costume design in the Gate Theatre as a means of understanding the influence of European modernism in Ireland. I am a core member of the EU funded Gate Theatre Research Network and I have recently been invited to on the Royal Irish Academy’s Historical Studies Committee.
- Recent Publications
2018: “Sisters in Arms: Ireland, Gender and Munitions 1914-1918. Modernist Cultures. A Special Issue on Ireland and the First World War. Spring.
2018: “Experiment and the Free State: Toto Cogley’s Cabaret and the founding of the Gate Theatre.” The Gate Theatre Dublin: Inspiration and Craft (Ed. David Clare). Carysfort Press, Dublin.
2017: “Designing Modernism: Harry Kernoff, Russia and post-independence Ireland. Eire-Ireland 52: 3 &4,Fall and Winter, 2017
2016: “Appeasing Pearse’s Ghosts: history, memory and theatre.” Patrick Pearse and the Theatre. (Eds.) Eugene McNulty and Róisín Ni Ghairbhí, Dublin: Four Courts Press.
2015: “Visual Shrapnel: Placing Irish design history within Irish Studies” (with Linda King) Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. Winter, 2014.
2015: “Materialising History: Historical Pageants and 1916” in Joanna Brück and Lisa Godson (eds) Making 1916: The Visual and Material Culture of the Easter Rising. Liverpool University Press.
2014: ‘Research Visibility and the “Emergent” Practices of Creative Media. ”Restating the Value of the Humanities (editors Jane Conroy and Margaret Kelleher). Published under the auspices of the Humanities Serving Irish Society Consortium, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.
- Media Coverage
- I have acted as an historical consultant on TV documentaries on the GAA, social history of 1916, the 1916 Rising, Patrick Pearse, the 1920s in Ireand, women's history in Ireland
- Social Media
- @ElaineSiss
- Country Focus
- Ireland
- Expertise by Geography
- Ireland
- Expertise by Chronology
- 19th century, 20th century
- Expertise by Topic
- Art & Architectural History, Colonialism, Gender, Material Culture, Rebellion & Revolution, Sexuality, Women, World War I
