Using Geographical Information Systems To Understand Religious Change and Sectarian Conflict in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Ireland

Gregory, I; Cunningham, N; Shuttleworth, I

doi:10.1093/9780191790355.001.0001

Using Geographical Information Systems To Understand Religious Change and Sectarian Conflict in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Ireland

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Niall Cunningham ORCiD

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Abstract

This chapter outlines the methodological approach taken by ‘Troubled Geographies: Two centuries of religious division in Ireland’, funded under the AHRC/ESRC’s ‘Religion & Society’ programme.1 The project took a quantitative approach to the theme, drawing on the availability of long-term administrative data on religious affiliation on the island of Ireland over the period since the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century. ‘Troubled Geographies’ had two core objectives. The first was an analysis of patterns of long-term change in the ethnic composition and socio-economic geography of the island based upon historic census data. Many of these records had recently been digitized as part of complementary concurrent investments in making historic quantitative data available to a wider scholarly and public audience. By rendering these spatially detailed historic census datasets available for long time periods, these investments laid the groundwork for a project such as ‘Troubled Geographies’, which could use them to track changes in patterns of religion and ethnicity over the long term and assess how change in ethnicity related to wider social and economic trends and developments.