Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism: The turbulent history of Anglo-Irish typhoid control in revolutionary Dublin

‘Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism: The turbulent history of Anglo-Irish typhoid control in revolutionary Dublin’, was a three-year, Irish Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)  funded project, exploring the turbulent history of typhoid in Dublin and the intimate connection between imperial and revolutionary public health politics in Dublin in the 20th century. 

The project used a mix of historical and digital humanities methods to analyse and digitise historical disease data, medical correspondence, cultural ephemera, infrastructural records, and meteorological data to understand why British bacteriological and sanitary interventions proved impractical in Dublin and how they were perceived by local populations. 

Typhoid, Cockles and Terrorism aimed to make significant contributions to research and engage audiences from all age groups on the importance of equitable access to effective sanitary infrastructure and vaccines.

We were looking to find a long-lasting, publicly available, and user-friendly home for our historical typhoid data and images for our ‘Typhoidland’ project. After researching various options (including seeing if we could build something in-house, which would have been very expensive and time-consuming) – we were very pleased to have found the Sustainable Digital Scholarship team! They transformed the next phase of our project about ‘Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism’ in 20th Century Dublin. What was really useful was having a seamless process from start to end, including additional expertise for eye-catching visualisations, We are more than happy with the final product which will provide an archive and resource for researchers, students, and the public for the future. 

Samantha Vanderslott PhD 

Associate Professor (Vaccines and Society Unit), Oxford Vaccines Group

For more information about the project, please visit the project's website.