Distinguished Lecture 2026 

The Economic and Social History Society of Ireland’s 2026 distinguished lecture will be delivered (online) by Prof Tyler Anbinder of George Washington University, in recognition of his significant contribution to the historiography of the Irish diaspora in America.

The lecture is entitled “The Surprising Socio-Economic Mobility of New York’s Great Famine Refugees” and will take place online at  11am EST (4pm GMT) on Thursday March 5th, 2026.

Register for and join the event here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/b5eb730e-d223-4bca-8966-0d932331480b@eaab77ea-b4a5-49e3-a1e8-d6dd23a1f286

Abstract:

In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this unprecedented migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. According to the American press, the “Famine Irish” were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But it turns out that the Famine immigrants did far better, far more quickly, than we have previously realized. In this lecture, historian Tyler Anbinder will discuss his research on the Famine refugees who settled (at least initially) in Manhattan and how it upends what we thought we knew about the Famine Irish in New York and beyond. The Famine Irish in America, Anbinder argues, enjoyed much more upward mobility than either contemporaries or subsequent historians have understood.