Dr. Laura O'Brien

Associate Professor School: Humanities and Social Sciences; Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences CARA postdoctoral fellow, based at TCD's Department of History and at the Centre de recherches en histoire du XIXeme siecle, Université Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) between 2010 and 2012. My research project, "Problematic pasts: creating and negotiating the memory of 1848 in France", explores the constructions and subsequent impact of the memory of the 1848 Revolution and Second Republic in France from the mid nineteenth-century to the Fourth Republic. I previously worked as a lecturer and teaching assistant in UCD's School of History and Archives and TCD's Centre for European Studies, specialising in French and European history. From 2005 to 2009 I was a fellow at the UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland. In 2009 I was awarded a PhD for my doctoral thesis, entitled 'Une république pas pour rire: caricature, satire and republican identity in the French Second Republic'. This thesis, which was funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, examined the problematic elucidation of moderate republicanism in France after the foundation of the Second Republic in 1848 through the prism of political caricature and satire. Its exploration of the depiction and representation of a variety of subjects in the satirical media, ranging from coverage of the February Revolution and the June insurrection of 1848 to the sustained mockery of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, highlights the important role played by caricature and satire in the attempt to define and promote moderate republicanism in the Second Republic. The thesis is currently being revised for a book which will explore representations of republicanism in French satire between 1830 and 1852.