David Lewin

Stephen G. Parker

Deirdre Raftery

J. Berglund

This first issue of the Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and Education makes the case for ‘religion and education’ as a distinct but cross-disciplinary field of inquiry. Authors argue for and outline the particular insights to be gleaned about ‘religion and education’ on the basis of their commitment to particular methodologies involved in its study, namely the historical, philosophical, sociological and psychological.

Religion and Education: Framing and Mapping a Field

Marie Clarke

In the past decade, historians have begun to make use of the optic of ‘transnationalism’, a perspective used traditionally by social anthropologists and sociologists in their study of the movement and flow of ideas between continents and countries. Historical scholarship has adopted this tool, and in this book historians of education use it to add nuance and depth to research on gender and education, and particularly to the education experiences of women and girls. The book brings together a group of internationally-regarded scholars, who are doing important research on transnationalism and the social construction of gender, with particular reference to education environments such as schools and colleges. The book is therefore very much at the cutting-edge of theoretical and methodological advances in the history of education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the History of Education.

Transnationalism, Gender and the History of Education

Educated at the Bar Convent, York, Teresa Ball became a pioneer of girls' education when she returned to Ireland, opening Loreto Abbey convent and boarding school in 1822. The Dublin convent quickly attracted the daughters of the Irish elite, not only as pupils but also as postulants and novices. The rapid expansion of Loreto convents in Ireland helped to provide a supply of nuns who founded a network of Loreto convents in nineteenth-century India, Mauritius, Gibraltar, Canada, England, Spain and Australia. This book commences with an original and important study of the Balls and their social world in Dublin at the start of the nineteenth century. Their network included members of the Catholic Committee, the Catholic Church hierarchy, and many benevolent public figures. The book gives new insight into how women operated in the margins of this Catholic world. The education of the Ball children, at York and Stonyhurst, positioned them for success in Catholic society, at a time when the confidence of their Church was growing in Ireland. The youngest of the Ball children was professed as a nun in 1816, in the York convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), and return

Convents and the Colonial World, 1794-1875

Teresa Ball and Loreto Education

Catriona Delaney

The first biographical study of Nano Nagle, the foundress of he Presentation order of nuns, that positions her within Irish social history, and assesses her vast international legacy. Nano Nagle: The Life and the Education Legacy draws on archival materials from three continents, providing a compelling account of how one woman's extraordinary life challenged social constraints and championed social justice and equality. Leading education historian, Deirdre Raftery, has produced not only a vital new biographical study of an exceptional Irish woman, but also a study of how thousands of Irish women joined the Presentation order of nuns and taught in their schools all over the world. Within that is the story of the Irish female diaspora in Newfoundland, India, North America, England, Australia, Africa and the Philippines. Nano Nagle: The Life and the Education Legacy throws opens a new window on an unknown aspect of Irish social history, while also demonstrating Ireland's significant contribution to the global history of female education.

The Life and the Legacy

Nano Nagle

Ann B. Murphy

Sarah Emily Davies (1830–1921) lived and crusaded during a time of profound change for education and women’s rights in England. At the time of her birth, women’s suffrage was scarcely open to discussion, and not one of England’s universities (there were four) admitted women. By the time of her death, not only had the number of universities grown to twelve, all of which were open to women; women had also begun to get the vote. Davies’s own activism in the women’s movement and in the social and educational reform movements of the time culminated in her founding of Girton College, Cambridge University, the first residential college of higher education for women. Much of the social change that Davies witnessed—and helped to effect—was discussed, encouraged, and elicited through her personal correspondence. These letters, written to friends, allies, and potential supporters during the years of Davies’s greatest political and social activity, reveal the evolution of her skill and sophistication as an activist. They also show the development of women’s suffrage, education, and journalism movements from a group of loosely affiliated like-minded friends to an astute and organized political network of reformers. In these letters–most of which have never been published—we see Davies struggle to understand and theorize about the role of women, cajole and encourage potential supporters, explore complexities of various reform movements, and demonstrate her formidable attention to detail in inventing and constructing an imaginable new institution. Her intensely engaged life placed Davies at the very heart of the events that transformed her era.

Deirdre Raftery

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