Maurice Casey, researcher on the Queer Northern Ireland project at Queen’s University Belfast, will share some of the LGBTQ histories and sources that the project team have uncovered. Covering the period from the 1880s to the 1980s, the project focuses on everyday experiences of queer sexuality and gender. To explore this largely ‘hidden history’, the team members have examined a wide array of sources, from long-forgotten memoirs and court records to oral histories and newspaper personal ads. Much of the talk will focus on a story of ‘local interest’: the life of Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883-1933), a queer Harvard professor who relocated from Cambridge to Donegal in the 1920s. Maurice will reveal what these queer lives can tell us about life and love in twentieth century Ireland.

Dr Maurice J. Casey is a Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded project Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford in 2020. From September-October 2023, he will be a visiting researcher based at Boston College.