Íde B. O’Carroll, PhD
Social Researcher & Author
About the author
Íde B. O’Carroll, PhD
Íde B. O’Carroll, PhD
Íde B. O’Carroll PhD is a social researcher, author and teacher who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts (USA) and Lismore, Waterford (Ireland).
As a consultant researcher (O’Carroll Associates International Consulting) she worked for many years on some of the key social change issues in Ireland, Europe and America. In 2014, she wound up her consultancy firm in order to concentrate on writing.
Her selected publications include: Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015 (Cork Uni. Press, 2018); ‘Across the Pond: Connections to Marriage Equality Ireland’ in Crossing the Threshold: The Story of the Marriage Equality Movement (Merrion, 2017); Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America (Cork Uni. Press, 2015); Daring Voices: The One Foundation’s Advocacy Programme, Ireland (OF, 2014); Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland: Towards the Twenty-First Century (Cassells, 1995), co-edited with E. Collins…
I am happy to announce the release on 2 October 2025 of my new book, Thirty Years of Change Through Women’s Eyes: Ireland, 1993-2023, published by Cork University Press/Attic (2025). I see this as the third in a series of books exploring Irish women’s experiences across 100 years, from the 1920s to the 2020s, all published by Cork University Press/Attic. The first, Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America (1990, revised and released again in 2015), then Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015 (2018), both of which explored emigration, return and transnational Irish migration.
This new book’s focus is on the women who stayed living in Ireland, their experiences and perspectives on the dramatic economic, social and political change in their society over three decades, as captured in interviews I conducted with each woman thirty years apart.
Original artwork for each book cover in the trilogy was created by Galway-born, London-based visual artist Lisa O’Donnell (lisaodonnellartist.com)
Thirty Years of Change Through Women’s Eyes: Ireland, 1993-2023
Cork University Press/Attic, 2025.
ISBN: 9781782050803 – RELEASE DATE 2 October 2025
Pre-order: www.corkuniversitypress.com
Price: $19.95 USA/Price: £15.95 CANADA /Price: €16.95 EUROPE
In this unique book, Irish women who stayed living on the island, who did not migrate (the subject of the author’s last two books), describe their lives and perspectives on a dramatically changed social context in Ireland from the 1990s to 2023. We hear the women’s voices through carefully crafted profiles based on interviews conducted with each woman thirty years apart. Located in different places on the island, the women from various social backgrounds describe their lives and perspectives on the changes they have witnessed in their society – the rise and fall of the economy, major inward migration, unparalleled advances in legislation enabling divorce, abortion and marriage equality. The women’s narratives are uplifting and inspiring – lives lived against the odds. The book also provides an analysis of the wider social, economic and political shifts that contributed to dramatic social change including women’s increased participation in the labour force, in education, in community-based organisations and in campaigns for change. Written for a general audience, Thirty Years of Change Through Women’s Eyes seeks to help readers understand how women were agents of change whose lives were also shaped by social change.
ENDORSEMENTS –
Through her research and publications, and here again, Íde has consistently highlighted major themes of significance in Irish women’s lives. She is one of those women whose friendship and feminist collaboration I have always valued.
GRÁINNE HEALY, facilitator, researcher, activist, former chair National Women’s Council of Ireland and EU Women’s Lobby, Co-Chair, Marriage Equality Campaign.
A compelling and inspiring book which powerfully illuminates three decades of key social change for Irish women. From the voices and experiences of seven women – through interviews incisively and elegantly relayed by Íde B. O’Carroll – emerge keen insights into the significance of education and caregiving, the continuing force of violence against women, and the endurance of hope, creativity and activism.
MARGARET KELLEHER, Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, University College Dublin
Íde B. O’Carroll considers transformations in the lives of Irish women interviewed in the early 1990s and again in 2023. The book beautifully captures both progress and continued challenges, effectively placing each woman’s story in its cultural, political and economic context, and offers an important and needed lens into a changing society.
JOYA MISRA, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Immediate Past President, American Sociological Association.
Íde B. O’Carroll provides us with fascinating insights into the extraordinary changes which have occurred for women in Ireland in the last thirty years. The diverse women featured had to struggle to find their place in a changing society. By documenting, in their own words, the journeys they took and the challenges they faced, O’Carroll’s book will take its place among Ireland’s most impactful feminist publications.
MARY McAULIFFE, Historian, Director, Gender Studies Programme, University College Dublin.
Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015
ISBN 978-1-78205-252-4
Cork University Press/Attic, 2018
This book tells the story of 1980s’ Irish migrants who lived through a time when Irish-US migration became transantional, aided by return migration and technological advances that enabled them to maintain transatlantic connections. Resident now in Ireland or America, the people profiled describe how they live their lives ‘here’ and ‘there’ in a way unimaginable to earlier generations. Though many were ‘illegal/undocumented’ originally in America, they successfully organised and lobbied to reform US immigration in their favour. The book’s analysis demonstrates that the US is no longer the primary long-distance destination for departing Irish to argue that Irish Transatlantics is an incomparable story that marks the end of Irish emigration to American as we have known it.
ENDORSEMENTS –
At turns uplifting and, at others, heart breaking, Íde B. O’Carroll creates a compelling portrait of how this generation of Irish families live their lives across borders. Researched with empathy and care, their stories suggest new insights about earlier migration experiences and foreshadows future trends.
PEGGY LEVITT, Transnational Studies Institute, Harvard University.
A century ago, when people left the west of Ireland for Boston or New York, they held wakes for them, because the presumption was they would never return. The modern Irish do return, then go back, and have a foot and a piece of their heart and soul on both sides of the Atlantic. They are Transatlantics. No one is better suited to tell this important story of changing cultures than Íde B. O’Carroll.
KEVIN CULLEN, Columnist, Boston Globe Newspaper.
[With Models for Movers and Irish Transatlantics] Íde B. O’Carroll has compiled a rich and textured account of mobility between Ireland and the USA from 1920 to the 2000s.
BREDA GRAY, author of Women and the Irish Diaspora
An original, insightful, and impressively informative study of impeccable scholarship, as well as a timely and valued contribution to our on-going national discussion (USA) about immigration and immigration policies, Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015 is an unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library collections.
ABLE GREENSPAN, Midwest Book Review
This is an intriguing book, written in a very accessible style. It is aimed at a general readership and is also of value for academic study of Irish migration. As a record and intimate account of a particular cohort of Irish migrants, O’Carroll’s book is invaluable.
MARY HICKMAN, Maynooth University
Íde introduces us to the next iteration of bonds that tie the present to the past and the here with the there. Modern Irish immigrants are ‘transatlantics,’ bridges connecting Ireland and the US who can live in two places simultaneously and contribute significantly to both.
MARION R. CASEY, Ireland House, New York University
Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America
ISBN: 9781782051565
Cork University Press/Attic, 2015
Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America is a ground-breaking collection of Irish women’s oral histories spanning three waves of twentieth-century emigration to the USA in the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s. The book provides a critical gender analysis of Irish society during the three migration waves to illustrate conditions for women prior to departure. The narratives detail how each woman created an independent life for herself in America, often in the face of multiple challenges there. As active agents, often supporting one another to leave Ireland, these Irish women are considered role models because they speak to and against the regulated silences surrounding emigration and the reality of Irish women’s lives. In addition, they provide a rich multi-generational tapestry of experience into which women leaving in later waves, often for places other than American, can weave their stories. This revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition came at a time of renewed global Irish migration. The research materials for the Models’ project formed the basis of the first ever archive on Irish women at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, the premier repository on the History of Women in America – the O’Carroll Collection.
ENDORSEMENTS –
Models for Movers is a feminist project and, as such, is upfront in its standpoint. O’Carroll makes the assumptions underpinning the conception of the project clear from the start. Her respect for and deep interest in the personal narratives of women themselves is evident in how the women participants are introduced and the ways in which she privileges their voices. The voices bring together experiences of and reflections on migration in ways that make explicit and implicit links between the personal and political.
BREDA GRAY, University of Limerick, author, Women and the Irish Diaspora
Models for Movers:Irish Women’s Emigration to America is a bold and necessary corrective, vindicating and valuing women’s first-hand accounts as a compelling method for gathering evidence on the human experience. It presents the reader with the “tough stuff” of Irish memory, the reasons and explanations that informed women’s desire and/or necessity to leave a repressing, limited State.
DAVID DOOLIN, Irish Literary Supplement, University College Dublin
Ground-breaking work.
TINA O’TOOLE, University of Limerick
Íde B. O’Carroll PhD – I am a social researcher and author. As consultant researcher (O’Carroll Associates International Consulting) I worked for many years on some of the key social change issues in Ireland, Europe and the United States. I wound up her consultancy firm in order to concentrate on writing.
My selected publications include: Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015 (Cork Uni. Press, 2018); ‘Across the Pond: Connections to Marriage Equality Ireland’ in Crossing the Threshold: The Story of the Marriage Equality Movement (Merrion, 2017); Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America (Cork Uni.Press, 2015); Daring Voices: The One Foundation’s Advocacy Programme, Ireland (OF, 2014); Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland: Towards the Twenty-First Century (Cassells, 1995), co-edited with E. Collins.
From 1991-1999, I was a Research Associate, Centre for Women’s Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; from 2012-2013, Visiting Scholar at the Center for Public Policy, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; from 2013-2017, Visiting Scholar, Ireland House, New York University, and from 2018-2023, Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.