Dr Suzanne Forbes
Senior Lecturer In History
Biography
I joined The Open University in 2015. Prior to this, I taught at University College Dublin and worked in further education as Assistant Co-ordinator of the National Print Museum’s Culture & Heritage Local Training Initiative.
My research has focussed on print culture and political communication in early modern Ireland. My first monograph, Print and Party Politics in Ireland, 1689–1714, explores these themes in depth. I am also interested in the representative system in eighteenth-century Ireland and the historic army barracks network.
I am co-lead of the project Our Shared Built Military Heritage: The Online Mapping, Inventorying and Recording of the Army Barracks of Ireland, 1690–1921 which was funded by the HEA North South Research Programme. This initiative involved identifying and cataloguing all historic barracks established in Ireland from 1690 to 1921. Further information about the project is available on OpenLearn and the project website barracksireland.wordpress.com.
I am a committee member of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society and was editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Ireland from 2019 to 2024.
Teaching interests
My teaching focusses on British and Irish history. At The Open University I have been on module teams for AA100, A105, A200, A825, A826, A223 and A225, and I have written units for A225, A111, A883 and A884. I have also been module team chair of the MA in History (A883/A884).
I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2016.
Projects
Our Shared Built Military Heritage: The online mapping, inventorying and recording of the Army Barracks of Ireland, 1690-1921
The commencement of the building of a countrywide network of army barracks in Ireland in the 1690s was a wholly new and innovative approach to dealing with the age-old problem of maintaining a standing army in both peace and wartime. The Irish model set the example for the rest of the British empire as the utility of residential military complexes became apparent. However, the impact of these barracks and their occupants upon Ireland at a local and national level have not been fully investigated. As sites of contested memory, there continues to be significant misunderstanding and misinterpretation of these buildings, both North and South, which in some cases leads to neglect and disharmony. This project will map all army barracks constructed in Ireland from the 1690s through to the end of a British Military presence in the Irish Free State in 1921-2. This work will build on a pilot project that has already identified 279 barracks sites for the period 1690-1822 and involved field work on County Armagh barrack sites, which in turn led to the development of a pilot map application as proof of concept (https://barracks18c.ucd.ie/). Additional data will be gathered on individual barracks, including textual evidence, building plans and images, and a short summary description of each site will be prepared. This will constitute the first complete inventory of all barracks in Ireland built while the whole island was under British governance. This research will facilitate quantitative and qualitative analysis of military barracks sites in Ireland and provide the groundwork for comparisons with Britain and other countries. It will also facilitate the creation of a range of outputs for use by the general public, educators, and researchers, including a web app that can be used for exploring these sites remotely as well as during visits to barrack locations. Co-Lead HEI partner is University College Dublin
