Education - Theses Register | Irish Georgian Society

For the Greater Glory of God and King: The Decoration of the Basilica of San Lorenzo El Real de El Escorial for Philip II of Spain

Rosemarie Mulcahy
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
1987
PhD

Subject: Interior decor
Country: Spain
Period: 16th Century

Irish Book Shrines: a Reassessment

Paul Mullarkey
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2000
PhD

Subject: Metal Work
Country: Ireland
Period: Early Medieval

Supervisor: Prof. Roger Stalley
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

Late Roman Villas in the Danube-Balkan Region

Lynda Mulvin
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
1999
PhD

Subject: Architecture
Country: Germany
Period: 3rd Century to 5th Century

Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

The Camera Eye: An Intertextual Approach to the Misrecognition of the Photograph

Richard Thomas Murphy
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
1998
PhD

Subject: Photography

Supervisor: Dr. Philip McEvansoneya
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

Thomas Farrell, Dublin sculptor 1827-1900

Paula Murphy
University College Dublin
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
1992
PhD

Subject: Sculpture
Country: Ireland
Period: 19th Century

Supervisor: Professor Alistair Rowan
80,000-100,000 words

Doing it for themselves: Artist-Run Gallery Spaces in Contemporary Ireland

Alexandra Murphy
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2018
PhD

Subject: Curating
Period: 21st Century

Supervisor: Dr Yvonne Scott
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

From Mars to Kassandra: the memorialisation of World War I in the work of Otto Dix.

Ann Murray
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2018
PhD

Subject: Painting
Country: Germany
Period: 20th Century

This thesis argues that the memorialisation of World War I in the work of German artist and soldier Otto Dix (1891-1969) challenged Germany’s prevailing social and political attitudes to war and militarism, demanding action against growing public support for militarist politics in the late Weimar Republic. Scholarship has dwelt on the art-historical context of Dix’s war pictures but not their interaction with the socio-political context, specifically in Dresden, where Dix worked, and where numerous extreme right-wing cultural and political groups were active. The thesis focuses on some battlefield pictures and two triptychs, Metropolis (1928) and War (1929 1932) relating them to the broader visual culture of war in order to assess Dix’s strategies as a transgressive commemorative artist. The relationship between Dix and Dresden’s extreme right-wing groups has been largely overlooked; yet, as the thesis reveals, the extreme Right’s negative reception of Dix’s work significantly complicates the terms by which his art is understood. Employing the methods of the social history of art, the thesis establishes the meaning of these works within their social, political and artistic context. Chapter I reconstructs Dix's first public showing in a soldiers’ art exhibition in Dresden in 1916 in order to trace the artist’s development as an incisive memoriographer of war. Chapter II treats nationalist art, artists and extreme right-wing criticism in Dresden in exploring the provocative nature of Dix’s appropriation and adaptation of the traditional styles and techniques lauded by the extreme Right. Chapter III looks at the role of the triptych Metropolis in catalysing right-wing art criticism during a major exhibition in Dresden in 1928. The final chapter focuses on the relative failure of the triptych War as antithetical to militarist culture, as based on the quantity and quality of its reception at the Prussian Academy in 1932.

Water sources: Improvement in the Irish and English designed landscape, 1660-1800

Ruth Musielak
University College Dublin
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
2013
PhD

Subject: Landscape Architecture/Design
Country: Ireland and England
Period: 17th - 19th Century

Supervisor: Prof. Kathleen James-Chakraborty
80,000-100,000 words

Liturgy and Architecture in Medieval Ireland ca. 1100- c.1315: Evidence from the Diocese of Killaloe

Frances Narkiewicz
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2011
PhD

Subject: Architecture
Country: Ireland
Period: 12th Century to 14th Century

Supervisor: Dr Roger Stalley
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

Reconstruction of the Gothic Past: Cultures of Conservation

Niamh NicGhabhann
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2012
PhD

Subject: Architecture
Country: Ireland
Period: Late 18th Century to 20th Century

Supervisor: Dr Roger Stalley
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

This thesis explores the restoration and conservation of Gothic ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Two key distinct but interrelated contexts have been examined: firstly, the development of scholarship on Irish Gothic architecture from 1789 to the early twentieth century, in both professional and non-professional contexts, and secondly, the approaches taken by different groups, including landlords and local communities, professional architects, and the Irish Ecclesiastical Commission, in the restoration, conservation and preservation of medieval buildings during this period. The introductory chapter and literature review evaluate the extent to which these subjects have been considered in the extant literature on the subject, identifying both the foundation texts for this investigation, as well as the texts in which the specific issues examined here have been overlooked. The second chapter establishes a theoretical framework for the thesis, in particular the development of critical historiography in Irish architectural history, identifying the works of critical theory which have informed the close reading methodologies used in my analysis of documents and texts in this thesis.

Temptation and Transgression: Images of Christ and the Adulteress, and of Susanna and the Elders, in Renaissance Venice

Audrey Nicholls
University College Dublin
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
2011
PhD

Subject: Painting
Country: Italy
Period: 16th century

Supervisor: Dr Philip Cottrell
80,000-100,000 words

Pedem Referens: Art Historical Memory and the Analogue in the Work of Tacita Dean, Jeremy Millar and Lucy Skaer

Kirstie North
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2016
PhD

Subject: Film and Photography
Period: 21st Century

This thesis explores the new art historical turn in contemporary art through close engagement with three British artworks. These are Tacita Dean’s, Section Cinema (Homage to Marcel Broodthaers), 2002, Jeremy Millar’s, The Man Who Looked Back, 2010, and Lucy Skaer’s, Leonora, 2006. Each of these artworks combines an art historical agenda with a celebration of the specificities of analogue film and photography in the context of our digital age. This thesis combines twentieth century photographic theory from Roland Barthes, André Bazin and Walter Benjamin, among others, with the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan in order to argue that the indexical qualities of analogue film and photography place the medium in close proximity to the Lacanian Real. In its obsolescence the analogue’s language of both touch and loss is heightened. Each chapter of this thesis explores a different aspect of the Real in relation to specific attributes of the analogue, such as its propensity for archiving cultural traumas, its receptiveness to chance, and its proximity to death.

Dublin divided: The impact of social conflict on planning and development in Georgian Dublin 1750- 1800

Diarmuid Ó Grada
University College Dublin
UCD School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy
1999
Master in Urban & Building Conservation

Subject: Social conflict in Georgian Dublin
Country: Ireland
Period: Late 18th Century

80,000-100,000 words

The Assembly, Display and Dispersal of Irish Collections 1750-1950

Aidan O'Boyle
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2011
PhD

Subject: Art, Display
Country: Ireland
Period: 18th Century to mid 20th Century

Supervisor: Dr Philip McEvansoneya
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

Ecce Homo in the Sixteenth Century

Catherine O'Brien
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
1987
PhD

Subject: Painting
Country: Ireland
Period: 16th Century

Supervisor: Anne Crookshank
Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

The Architecture of Bank Buildings in Ireland in 1726-1910

Emmet O'Brien
University College Dublin
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
1991
PhD

Subject: Architecture
Country: Ireland
Period: 18th and Early 19th Century

Supervisor: Professor Alistair Rowan
80,000-100,000 words

Fashioning Material That Matters: An Examination of Costume Making At the National Ballet of Canada

Caroline O'Brien
National College of Art and Design
Faculty of History of Art and Design and Complementary Studies
2022
PhD

Subject: Fashion
Country: Canada

Supervisor: Dr Lisa Godson and Hilary O'Kelly
Approx. 80,000 - 100,000 words

Sean Keating 1889-1977 – New Perspectives

Éimear O'Connor
University College Dublin
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
2007
PhD

Subject: Painting
Country: Ireland
Period: 20th Century

Supervisor: Dr. Paula Murphy
80,000-100,000 words

Building the Butler Lordship, 1405 - c.1552

Danielle O'Donovan
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2008
PhD

Subject: History
Country: Ireland
Period: 15th and 16th Century

Supervisor: Prof. Roger Stalley
Approx. 60,000-80,000

Public Works Architecture in Ireland, 1829-1923

Frederick O'Dwyer
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
1996
PhD

Subject: Architecture
Country: Ireland
Period: 19th Century to Early 20th Century

Approx. 60,000 - 80,000 words

Sarah Henrietta Purser: her Life and her Work

John N O'Grady
University College Dublin
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
1974
PhD

Subject: Painting
Country: Ireland
Period: Late 19th and 20th Century

Supervisor: Professor Francoise Henry
80,000-100,000 words

'Mixing foreign trees with the natives': Irish demesne landscape in the Eighteenth Century

Finola O’Kane
University College Dublin
UCD School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy
1999
PhD

Subject: Country homes
Country: Ireland
Period: 18th Century