Dr. Owen O'Shea
@owenoshea.bsky.social
460 followers 830 following 130 posts
History, politics, books and coffee, in no particular order. PhD from UCD on post-Civil War politics in Kerry. New books coming in 2025. Author, historian, researcher. More at www.owenoshea.ie
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owenoshea.bsky.social
📚BOOK NEWS 📢

Really thrilled to be working with the wonderful team at @ucdpress.bsky.social to publish my #PhD research on politics and electioneering in County #Kerry in the decade after the Civil War

"From Bullets to Ballots" will be published in September 2025

www.ucdpress.ie/page/catalog...
Reposted by Dr. Owen O'Shea
philipoconnor.bsky.social
Sweden's Greta Thunberg is dehydrated, under-fed and being held in poor conditions ans subjected to intimidation by the Israelis after being illegally kidnapped in international waters - and her government is saying nothing.
As pathetic as they are spineless.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...
Greta Thunberg says she is being detained by Israel in cell infested with bedbugs
Activist tells Swedish officials she has been subjected to harsh treatment, including insufficient food and water
www.theguardian.com
owenoshea.bsky.social
I am honoured to have been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org in recognition of my contribution to historical scholarship

Very grateful to the RHS Council and looking forward to making a positive contribution to historical research with fellow historians
owenoshea.bsky.social
"O’Shea’s adroit presentation of the text and the contextual commentaries he provides lifts it to another level."

Grateful to Mark Duncan for his generous and thoughtful review of One Man's Ireland: Memoirs of Dan Mulvihill for the Journal of the Irish Labour History Society

shorturl.at/ysRJD
owenoshea.bsky.social
Sorry to hear of the passing of Martin Mansergh

As vice-chair of the Advisory Group on the Decade of Centenaries he opened our Kerry Civil War Conference in 2023

An enthusiastic supporter of the conference, he contributed to it eloquently and incisively

May he rest in peace 🙏
owenoshea.bsky.social
Inspiring evening at the Kerry Young Historian of the Year Awards hosted by the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society

Warm congratulations to Lucy Griffin on being announced as the overall winner

The future of historical research in Kerry is in safe hands

Information: www.kerryhistory.ie
owenoshea.bsky.social
Coming this October from @ucdpress.bsky.social and historian and author Owen O'Shea

The first ever county-based study of Civil War politics in Ireland

How and why did the Civil War shape politics and elections in Kerry in the decade after 1923?

Pre-order now: shorturl.at/56pZE
From Bullets To Ballots
Civil War politics has defined the Irish political landscape for generations. The parties which emerged from the divisions over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 dominated elections for decades. The war ...
shorturl.at
Reposted by Dr. Owen O'Shea
ucdpress.bsky.social
Coming to a bookstore near you in October 2025…

From Bullets to Ballots: Politics and Electioneering in Post-Civil War Kerry, 1923–33 by Owen O’Shea

🔗 Preorder here bit.ly/From-B2B

#IrishCivilWar #CivilWarPolitics #IrishHistory #KerryHistory @owenoshea.bsky.social
owenoshea.bsky.social
Great story. Thanks for sharing. At least the roads were somewhat safer in those days!
owenoshea.bsky.social
Honoured to receive such a generous endorsement for my forthcoming book from Dr Bill Kissane of the London School of Economics who has described the work as 'a first class piece of scholarship'.

From Bullets to Ballots will be published soon by @ucdpress.bsky.social
owenoshea.bsky.social
A great privilege to have attended the State Commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell at his home at Derrynane today.

A fitting tribute and celebration of a giant of a man whose politics and message are as powerful and relevant today as they ever were.

#OConnell250
owenoshea.bsky.social
📚BOOK NEWS 📢

Really thrilled to be working with the wonderful team at @ucdpress.bsky.social to publish my #PhD research on politics and electioneering in County #Kerry in the decade after the Civil War

"From Bullets to Ballots" will be published in September 2025

www.ucdpress.ie/page/catalog...
owenoshea.bsky.social
Very pleased to have my review of the new biography of Kevin O'Higgins published in Irish Political Studies.

'Walled in by hate: Kevin O'Higgins: His Friends and Enemies' is published by Merrion Press and is a welcome reappraisal of the controversial figure

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Walled in by hate: Kevin O’Higgins, his friends and enemies
Published in Irish Political Studies (Ahead of Print, 2025)
www.tandfonline.com
Reposted by Dr. Owen O'Shea
lottelydia.bsky.social
All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.
owenoshea.bsky.social
In the four years after the Famine, 40,000 people emigrated from County #Kerry, according to Census data from the 1800s just published by the VRTI

Here is my analysis of some of the fascinating material in the Census reports from 1821 to 1851:

owenoshea.ie/the-people-a...
The people “are wretchedly poor”: new data on life in Kerry from 1800 censuses
Between 1851 and 1855, a total of 39,520 people emigrated from Kerry – with the intention of not returning – that is the equivalent today to the population of Tralee and Killarney combined.
owenoshea.ie
owenoshea.bsky.social
Looking forward to speaking at the Sneem Summer Festival in #Sneem #Kerry on 19 July and reflecting on the Decade of Centenaries in Kerry. What lessons can we learn from the commemoration of events over the past decade?

🎟️Free admission
📅Saturday 19 July
⏲️5.00pm
⛪️Old Church
owenoshea.bsky.social
Chatted with Radio Kerry about some of the amazing revelations about #Kerry contained in the new #census reports from the 1800s which have been released by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland.

Will post more details in due course on my website. Listen back:

www.radiokerry.ie/podcasts/ker...
Reposted by Dr. Owen O'Shea
bullivant.bsky.social
On 13 June 1912 Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and a group of suffragettes, smashed windows in Dublin Castle to highlight the woman’s right to vote cause. It was an offence for which she would spent a month in prison.

#Ireland #IrishHistory #HannaSheehySkeffington #Dublin #Suffragettes #WomensRights
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (1877-1946)
Reposted by Dr. Owen O'Shea
ottoenglish.bsky.social
The weaponisation of a past that few can remember for modern political ends continues.

Trump suggests that Putin lost 51 million people in WW2. Quite the achievement when the Russian president was born in 1952.
thebulwark.com
Trump: "Russia fought with us in WWII and everybody hates them. And Germany and Japan, they're fine — some day somebody will explain that...Everybody hates Russia and they love Germany and Japan...It's a strange world."
owenoshea.bsky.social
Thrilled to have been granted a Commemorations Bursary from the Royal Irish Academy for an exhibition on the early years of the Fianna Fáil party in #Kerry to coincide with the centenary of the party's foundation in 1926.

The exhibition will be presented during the early months of 2026 across Kerry
Reposted by Dr. Owen O'Shea
cwebbonline.com
If your response to this video is, “That’s what I voted for”—
Fuck you. Fuck you very much.

You’re heartless.
owenoshea.bsky.social
The first thing Pope Leo should do is travel to #Gaza to demand an end to the Israeli genocide on behalf of Catholics and on behalf of humanity.

It would be a real statement of leadership which is so sadly lacking among so-called leaders and genocide enablers worldwide

I wish him well 🙏 #PopeLeo
owenoshea.bsky.social
#OTD in 2023 I was proud to unveil a plaque in my home town of Milltown, Co. Kerry, to honour three local civilians killed during Ireland's Civil War

Read more about their tragic deaths and how the theft of a small quantity of flour triggered cataclysmic events:

owenoshea.ie/looting-kidn...
owenoshea.bsky.social
🔊A voice from the past

Recording with Dan Mulvihill, revolutionary and republican, in 1984 in which he explains how he tried to publish his memoir in the 1970s

Fifty years later that ambition is realised in my new book

www.irishacademicpress.ie/product/one-...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=caEX...
IRA leader and revolutionary, Dan Mulvihil, interviewed in 1984
YouTube video by Owen O'Shea
www.youtube.com