Padhraig Higgins F'12

ACLS Fellowship Program 2012
Associate Professor
Department: Liberal Arts
Mercer County Community College
“The Rights of the Poor”: Poverty and Everyday Life in Eighteenth-Century Dublin

This project examines the experience of poverty in eighteenth-century Dublin and the agency of the poor in the face of attempts by authorities to discipline and police vagrant and marginal populations. It is part of a larger interdisciplinary project on the cultural history of poverty in Dublin, focusing on both how the poor were portrayed and the sectarian politics of poverty and poor relief, as well as on the survival strategies of marginal groups such as vagrants and prostitutes.