Professor Olwen Purdue

Modern Social History at Queen’s University Belfast

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Olwen Purdue is Professor of Modern Social History at Queen’s University Belfast where she works on social class, power and agency in nineteenth and twentieth-century Ulster. She has edited several collections on Belfast’s social history and published two monographs: The Big House in the North of Ireland: Land, Power and Social Elites 1878-1960(Dublin, 2009) and Poverty, Children and the Poor Law in Industrial Belfast 1880-1914 (Liverpool, 2023)

Professor Purdue also works on public history and heritage, particularly in difficult or contested contexts. She founded and directs the Centre for Public History and the MA in Public History at Queen’s University and sits on the steering committee of QUB’s Heritage Hub. Her edited volume, Public History in Ireland: Difficult Pasts, was published by Routledge in 2024.

She sits on the Council of the Royal Historical Society and on the Board of Directors of the Irish Museums Association. She is a member of the project board for National Museums NI’s redevelopment of the Ulster Museum, was historical advisor to the Titanic Belfast, a member of the advisory panel for the Ulster Museum’s Troubles and Beyond gallery, and occasionally contributes to historical documentaries for local and national television.