Royal Historical Society: Visible | Invisible: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland

RHS Anniversary Lecture: ‘Visible | Invisible: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland’

VOICES PI, Professor Jane Ohlmeyer delivered a lecture at Royal Historical Society, UK on Friday 21 November 2025. The lecture, on ‘Visible | Invisible: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland’ was the Society’s 2025 Anniversary Lecture.

Jane’s lecture introduced her the five-year ERC project, VOICES, which brings together historians and computer scientists to recover the lives of early modern women in Ireland. VOICES uses transcription software and Generative AI to capture data from deposition, burial and other records to generate a ‘knowledge graph’ of Irish women, their networks and experiences, between c.1550 and 1700.

Jane’s lecture provided insights into the methodologies of the VOICES project, the rewards and challenges of using Artificial Intelligence at scale, and some early findings from the project for recovering and redefining the place of women in early modern Ireland.

The lecture draws on findings from VOICES, and how it documents the lived experiences of non-elite women in Ireland between 1550 and 1700 who have largely been ignored by scholars more interested in privileging the stories of men of power and influence.

These women lived in patriarchal societies where they were regarded as being subordinate to men in the domestic and public spheres. This patriarchy and misogyny are baked into most of the extant records, which helps to explain the invisibility of these women, along with the more general scarcity of historical sources recording their lives.

How can technologies, especially those associated with Artificial Intelligence and the Knowledge Graph, render visible the invisible and help to recover the lived experiences women in historical records? How can this be done at scale and ethically? How can we ensure that methodologies and processes developed as part of VOICES cross time and place and are replicable in other regions and time periods?

Access the recording here: https://royalhistsoc.org/category/rhs-video-archive/