Irish Women on the Move

Irish women on the Move: Migration and Mission in Spain, 1499-1700 is an original work, drawn from archival sources from across the Iberian peninsula. It examines the history of a dynamic and enterprising group of Irish women who migrated to Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, and throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in three distinct waves of migration. At the centre of this network of Irish women were a group of Dominican nuns who travelled from Galway to Bilbao in the Bizkaia region of Spain with the specific purpose of founding their order throughout Spain. They and their sponsors established schools and an academic curricula which facilitated assimilation into Spanish society whilst also marking them out as outstanding educators. They, along with Irish women spies and courtiers show how a dynamic and successful group of Irish women played a central part in the history of late medieval and early modern Spanish life.

Andrea Knox is a senior lecturer in Early Modern European History and Women’s History at the University of Northumbria, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Andrea has published on areas as diverse as Irish and Scottish female criminality, early modern female rebel networks, Irish women’s migration to Spain and Portugal, and girls’ education. Andrea has published in journals including the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Criminal Justice History, Immigrants and Minorities, and Quidditas; the Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association. In 2009 Andrea won the Delno C. West Award for the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the Annual Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association conference, held in the USA.