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"Religion, Land and Law: The Legislation and Execution of Penal Laws against Catholic Landowners in 18-century Ireland"

Following the defeat of James II the Protestant governments of England and Ireland introduced a series of anti-Catholic laws (today known as "the Penal Laws"). This paper focuses on those laws which curtailed Catholic property rights. An analysis of the relevant statutes unveils an impressive amount of oppression. However, the text of the law differed considerably from reality and it will be shown that the situation of Catholic landowners was not as desperate as one might assume.

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This is title and abstract of my little (50mins) talk today. Yep, my talk. You know, all my colleagues were obliged to give a talk in the institute's "Central European Talks" and when I saw them I felt I'd like to do one too. Try to talk about my master thesis. Obviously with Ireland I didn't fit into central Europe but the boss kindly introduced me to the organiser of a lecture series at the history department. So this is one of the reasons I didn't manage to write these days - especially not yesterday or today. ;-)

In one respect I failed once again: I tell you I was so mad at myself at the end of last week. That lecture was settled, when? Four weeks ago, five weeks ago, I think even six. And when I heard it I was so happy and once more I had this plan: This time I start early, I will be finished a week before or so and then check details, plan a good power point presentation. Ha as you can imagine reality was very different. I worked until four in the morning yesterday, got up at half past eight and had about another hour to go. But: I did have at least some slides for the presentation. And I was finished at about eleven which is at least four hours prior to the lecture. And I had time to go it through once. So in this sense I failed again. Although, I have hope: Yesterday I met Laryn, a girl from the German club (she's half Irish and I asked her about the pronunciation of some of place names). She is working at the sport centre massaging a lot of university professors and said from what she heard from her clients that's the usual thing it's done. So being late merely means I'm a good academic. :-)

Anyway, the talk went well. As always the perfectionist was not entirely happy, in times I thought I talked way too quick, in times I lost words, in times I asked myself whether that made sense at all. I’m not entirely convinced but people seemed to liked it. And Kinga said I'm a good lecturer, that I talked very well, which is the biggest compliment because she would tell me the truth if it wasn't so. On the other hand she's usually positive and also kind of into the topic.. Anyway I'm satisfied.

You know, before I came here, and even at the start of this year my goal was finding a job with what I've learned so far but gradually I'm considering to make what I've learned so far my job. At least my job for the next years. I enjoy the community of researchers, especially if they are in a similar field. I enjoy being among graduate historians. I enjoy listening to conferences (even if it's just graduate conferences). And after today I think: I also enjoy talking about something I really know a lot about. But above all: I enjoy research. Just writing this paper I realised how many questions could be asked which I would not be able to answer. How many questions which I ask myself but haven't found a book which answers them. In conclusion: I seriously consider to do a PhD.

And I may stay in the topic of 18 century Ireland. It would make sense. Although the thing I'm missing is a talk with a real expert on 18 century Ireland. I would like to know what they would think of my work, which points are good and which not so much. And after all I worked little with primary sources so I don't know that well which questions would be answerable and which aren't simply because there is no material. (The thing is that the Irish Public Record office i.e. "Staatsarchiv" was destroyed in the fights of 1921 and, therefore, an unimaginable amount of sources is simply missing. Well I will see. For today I’ll be relaxing..