Rebel with a Cause: Michael Davitt’s Global Paths

Michael Davitt emerged from poverty to become one of Ireland’s most important political figures. Born in Mayo during the Great Famine, his family was evicted when he was a young child – an experience that would shape his lifelong commitment to justice. The Davitts then moved to England, where he began his republican career as an organiser for the Irish Republican Brotherhood and served more than seven years in Pr*son. In 1879, he co-founded the Irish National Land League, a mass movement for tenancy rights, which, at its height, reportedly had 200,000 members. Queen Victoria once called him “one of the worst of the treasonable agitators”.

Davitt’s interests extended far beyond Ireland. He travelled widely as a public lecturer, addressing audiences in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and also made a living as a foreign correspondent. Among his most significant assignments was a 1903 investigation into the anti-Jewish pogrom in Kishinev, Russia (now Chișinău, Moldova), commissioned by William Randolph Hearst’s American newspapers.

Join us for a seminar exploring Davitt’s global connections, with insights from his letters, diaries, photographs and newspaper articles.

About the speakers:

Ciara Daly

Ciara Daly is the project archivist on the Michael Davitt Papers Project in the Library of Trinity College Dublin. She graduated from the Archives and Records Management MA in UCD in 2019 and joined Trinity's Manuscripts and Archives Research Collection department in 2020. She has since completed three philanthropically-funded projects: the Cuala Press Prints Project, the Trinity Women Graduates Project and the Brendan Kennelly Literary Archives Project. The Michael Davitt Papers Project began in September 2024 with the aim of enhancing the Davitt legacy catalogue, and conserving and digitising the entire collection. Ciara has curated an exhibition titled ‘Character is better than wealth: the enduring legacy of Michael Davitt’, which will be on display in the Long Room of the Old Library from February 2026 until July 2026.

Catherine Healy

Catherine Healy is historian-in-residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, a role funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She holds a PhD from the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, where she was a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar. Her first book, Intimate Connections: Irish Domestic Servants in Transatlantic Culture, c. 1870-1945, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025. Catherine is the curator of ‘Frontlines’, an exhibition on two centuries of Irish overseas journalism, currently open at EPIC until the end of March 2026. She previously worked in newsrooms as a reporter and feature writer.

Main Image: Davitt with Jewish victims of the Kishinev pogrom. May 24, 1903. IE TCD MS 9649/499. Trinity College, University of Dublin.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum