Troubled Geographies: Two centuries of religious division in Ireland

爱尔兰人口普查提供的有关宗教的数据为我们提供了一个独特的机会，使我们能够在一个宗教影响深远的国家研究宗教与社会关系的长期地理变化。幸运的是，ESRC已经以爱尔兰历史统计数据库的形式资助了爱尔兰人口普查数据的数字化，包括分治后的北部和南部。这一现有资源是该项目的核心，因为它告诉我们宗教与广泛的社会经济指标之间的关系。将这一点与当代人口普查结合起来，提供了足够的数据，让我们能够分析从19世纪中期到现在的时期。我们将在其中添加一个地理信息系统，以允许我们绘制这些数据并探索它们所包含的空间和时空模式。在ESRC的研究方法计划的一项拨款下，Gregory&Ell博士开发了“区域内插”技术，使我们能够使用标准化到一组行政边界上的数据来探索随时间的变化。这使我们能够探索时空变化的详细模式，而不需要求助于县等高度聚集的单位。为了补充这些方法创新的方法，我们还将使用传统的叙事来增加关于特定地点和主题的细节。这将得到我们最近的JISC拨款的帮助，该拨款正在将一系列与爱尔兰研究有关的期刊、专著和其他材料数字化，以及AHRC之前的两笔拨款，该拨款将爱尔兰议会论文数字化。这些资源为我们提供了无与伦比的获取爱尔兰岛及其组成部分的材料的途径。因此，地理信息系统允许我们识别不断变化的宗教认同模式的广泛故事，而叙事则允许我们更详细地讲述关于特定地方的特定故事。我们将探索两个关键主题。第一个是关于从十九世纪中叶到现在爱尔兰岛上宗教与身份、社区、福利和繁荣之间的长期关系。自1861年以来的每一次人口普查都提供了有关宗教派别的信息。我们还将包括1834年公共教育专员提供的信息，其中提供了关于19世纪40年代末饥荒之前时期宗教的一些信息。我们将利用这一点来探索宗教认同与年龄、性别、阶级、语言、移民、健康、教育以及社会和经济福利等因素之间的变化关系。这使我们能够研究宗教群体与社会和经济边缘化、社会资本发展、社会融合和健康结果之间的空间、人口和文化关系。我们可以探讨的一个特别方面是，这些变化在多大程度上是对内战和分治、动乱开始和饥荒等冲击的突然反应，或者是更渐进的长期变化。除了天主教徒，教会或爱尔兰，以及长老会，我们还将探索更多的次要新教教派，犹太人，以及最近移民群体的宗教。我们的第二个相关主题是由于网格正方形数据的可用性，使我们能够更详细地探索动乱期间北爱尔兰宗教和社会之间的联系。除了上述主题外，我们还将探讨宗教、社会和动乱期间杀戮之间的关系，以及这些关系是如何从20世纪60年代末到21世纪初发生变化的。我们将通过期刊文章和演示文稿向学术受众传播。对爱尔兰感兴趣的受众也要广泛得多，包括社区领袖、记者、家庭历史学家和非专业研究人员。我们将通过我们的电子地图集和当代纸质版本对这些进行研究。

The availability of data on religion from the Irish censuses provides us with a unique opportunity to study long-term geographical change in the relationship between religion and society in a country where the impact of religion has been profound. We are fortunate that the ESRC has already funded the digitisation of Irish census data, North and South after Partition, in the form of the Database of Irish Historical Statistics. This existing resource is central to the project as it tells us about the relationship between religion and a broad range of socio-economic indicators. Combining this with contemporary censuses provides enough data to let us analyse the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will add a GIS to it to allow us to map these data and explore the spatial and spatio-temporal patterns that they contain. Under a grant to the ESRC's Research Method's Programme Drs Gregory & Ell developed 'areal interpolation' techniques that allow us to explore change over time using data standardised onto a single set of administrative boundaries. This allows us to explore detailed patterns of spatio-temporal change without resorting to highly aggregate units such as counties. To complement these methodologically innovative approaches we will also use traditional narratives to add detail about specific places and themes. This will be assisted by our recent JISC grant that is digitising a wide range of journals, monographs and other material related to Irish studies, and by two previous AHRC grants that digitised Irish parliamentary papers. These resources provide us with unrivalled access to material on the island of Ireland and its constituent places. Thus, the GIS allows us to identify the broad stories of the changing patterns of religious identity, while the narrative allows us to tell specific stories about specific places in more detail. We will be exploring two key topics. The first is concerned with the long-term relationship between religion and identity, community, welfare and prosperity over the island of Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Every census since 1861 provides information on religious denominations. We will also include information from the 1834 Commissioners of Public Instruction which provides some information on religion in the period prior to the Famine of the late 1840s. We will use this to explore the changing relationship between religious identity and factors such as age, gender, class, language, migration, health, education, and social and economic welfare. This allows us to research the spatial, demographic and cultural relationships between religious groups and social and economic marginalisation, the development of social capital, social integration, and health outcomes. One particular aspect that we can explore is the extent to which changes in these have been sudden responses to shocks such as the Civil War and Partition, the start of the Troubles, and the Famine, or whether they have been more gradual long-term changes. In addition to Catholics, Church or Ireland, and Presbyterians, we will also explore more minor Protestant denominations, Jews, and the religions of recent immigrant groups. Our second, related topic is enabled by the availability of grid square data which allows us to explore the connections between religion and society in more detail for Northern Ireland over the period of the Troubles. In addition to the themes described above, we will also explore the relationship between religion, society, and killings during the Troubles, and how these changed from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. We will disseminate to an academic audience using journal articles and presentations. There is also a much broader audience with an interest in Ireland including community leaders, journalists, family historians and lay researchers. We will research these through our electronic atlas and a contemporary paper version of this.