University College Cork(UCC): History of Art People Guest & Visiting Dr. Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh

Search

Name: Dr. Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh
Position: Associate Investigator, Christ on the Cross Project
T: 353 (0)21 4903933
F: 353 (0)21 4903254
E: j.nighradaigh@ucc.ie

Biography

Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh studied the History of Art at University College Dublin, before going on to complete her doctoral thesis on Romanesque architectural sculpture at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. This dealt with the political and social context of the creation of distinctive schools of Romanesque carving under the patronage of regional kings in late twelfth-century Ireland.

From 2003 to 2006 she was a John O’Donovan scholar at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies where she conducted further research on the role of the craftsman and patron in pre-Norman Ireland, and the role of antiquarianism in nineteenth-century architectural studies. She moved to UCC in 2006 as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences. She is now Associate Investigator of the IRCHSS-funded project, ‘Christ on the cross: textual and material representations of the Passion in early medieval Ireland (ca. 800-1200)’; see further www.christonthecross.org.

Research Interests:

Her research interests are focused on the significance of art and architecture in early medieval Ireland, in particular secular and ecclesiastic interactions through the medium of art. The creation of artworks by patrons, especially women, as a means of asserting political or personal control, remains an area of ongoing interest. Recently her research has explored issues of audience and function in the creation of meaning by different consumers of public art in the tenth-twelfth centuries, and the affective quality of the artworks—issues complicated for modern scholars by the earlier ‘Insular’ artistic inheritance. Her work on high crosses, metalwork and manuscripts for the Christ on the Cross Project will continue to mine this rich seam.

The historiography of architecture in Ireland, from Gerald of Wales in the 1180s, to Margaret Stokes in the 1880s and beyond, and problematic disciplinary divides in the study and mediation of Ireland’s medieval heritage is a complementary research area.

Publications:

‘Christ on the cross in early medieval Ireland’, Archaeology Ireland, Vol.23 No.4 Winter 2009, pp. 26-30.

Articles on ‘Ambulatories’, ‘Apses’, ‘French Gothic Architecture’, ‘Spanish Gothic Architecture’, ‘French Romanesque Architecture’, ‘Spanish Romanesque Architecture’, ‘Irish Cult objects’, ‘Influences from Earlier Christian Architecture’, ‘Iron grilles in Churches’, in L. Taylor, ed., Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, Leiden, 2009.

‘Locked up, locked in, always looking for doorways’, in Lost and Found, vol.2, ed. J. Fenwick, Wicklow, 2009, pp. 125-39.

‘Authorship denied: Margaret Stokes, Rev. James Graves and the publication of Petrie’s Christian Inscriptions’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol.138, 2008, pp.134-44.

‘Depicting the evangelists, defining sacred space: the round tower at Devenish, Co. Fermanagh’, in Approaches to Religion and Mythology in Celtic Studies, eds. K. Ritari & A. Bergholm, Newcastle, 2008, pp. 68-98.

‘Agha church: architectural iconography and building ambiguities’, in Carlow: History and Society, eds. T. McGrath & W. Nolan, Dublin, 2008, pp. 53-83.

‘T.N. Deane no better than Westropp’, Archaeology Ireland, Vol.22, No.3 Autumn 2008, p. 17.

‘A legal perspective on the saer and workshop practice in pre-Norman Ireland’, in R. Moss, ed. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of Insular Art, Dublin 2007, pp.110-25.

‘Scattery Island’s forgotten Romanesque’, Archaeology Ireland, Vol.20 No.4 Winter 2006, pp.26-30.

‘‘My dear Pickwick’ - James Graves’ early sketchbooks and his development as an antiquarian’, in Ossory, Laois and Leinster, vol.2, 2006, pp.96-122.

‘Temple Finghin, and two unusual voussoirs from Clonmacnoise’, Archaeology Ireland, vol.19, no.3 Autumn 2005, pp.26-31.

‘Fragments of a twelfth-century doorway at the church of St Multose, Kinsale?’, JRSAI, vol.133, 2003, pp.68-77.

‘‘But what exactly did she give?’ Derbforgaill and the Nuns’ Church’, in Clonmacnoise Studies II, ed. Heather King, Dublin 2003, pp.175-207.