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Originally from Ferns, Co Wexford, and recently moved to Carlow town from Straffan, Dr Ida Milne worked in the newspaper industry and as a travel journalist, before returning to education in 2000. Her PhD research (TCD 2011) and monograph were on the social, political and medical impact of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. She is a visiting research fellow in TCD Department of History. She was awarded an Irish Research Council Marie Sklowodska Curie Actions Elevate fellowship in 2014-18 (Maynooth University and Queen’s University Belfast), for a project exploring the impact of infectious diseases of childhood on Irish society over the course of the 20th century. She was principal researcher on the RAMI Living Medical History Project, capturing oral histories of working medical lives. She was a post-doctoral fellow on the TCD History Glasnevin 1918-19 influenza pandemic conference and exhibition in 2018. Her principle research field is the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. During Covid-19, she has become a frequent commentator on news media in Ireland and internationally about the lessons to be drawn from the history of epidemic disease. She was one of the speakers at President Michael D Higgins’ commemoration of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in 2019. She has taught history as an adjunct in TCD, Maynooth University, Queen’s University Belfast, and Dublin City University St Patrick’s.
Professional associations
Milne currently co-chairs (with Ian Miller, UU) the European Social Science Conference Health and Environment Strand, and (with Prof Martha Norkunas, East Tennessee State University), the International Committee of the Oral History Association (US). She is a founder member and committee member of the HSTMI, She is a member of the OHS, IAPH, IHS, the WHAI, and OHNI, of which she was a founder member and former vice chair and PRO. Milne was a two-term member of the Royal Irish Academy Historical Sciences Committee, standing down in 2022, and was on the organising team for the RIA Disestablishment conference, 2021.
Ida’s principle research areas lie in the social history of medicine, in changing theories, knowledge about, and impact of infectious disease and how they affect healthcare and society. She is particularly interested in the short and long term impact of disease on people’s lives, and in working lives in medicine; she finds oral history is a useful way to access the intimate human experience of disease (from a patient and a work perspective, and uses this in tandem with statistics and other written sources to write a holistic history. She is currently working on the history of infant ‘summer’ diarrhoea, looking the international influences on local management of a disease that used to be a major killer in the Global North, and still is in underdeveloped countries. A second strong research field is the social history of Protestants in the Republic (and their engagement with the GAA). Her other research interests include working lives in medicine and in the newspaper industry, gender in the workplace. She has three books under preparation, on infectious disease, public and family history, and Wicklow in the decade of centenaries (co-authored with Ian d’Alton).
With Ian d’Alton, editors, ‘Irish AND Protestant, the minority’s search for place in independent Ireland’, (Cork University Press, 2019).
Stacking the coffins, influenza, war and revolution in Ireland, (Manchester University Press, 2018).
Mary Muldowney, editor, with Ida Milne, 100 years later: the legacy of the 1913 Lockout (based on the work of the 1913 Alternative Visions Oral History Group trained by Milne and Muldowney).
‘Changing narratives of that other great pandemic’; Guy Beiner, editor, Pandemic Reawakenings (Oxford University Press, 2022).
‘”The Jersey is all that matters, not your religion”: Protestants and the GAA’ in Ida Milne and Ian d’Alton, editors, ‘Irish AND Protestant, the minority’s search for place in independent Ireland’, (Cork University Press, 2019).
‘Health and urban poor children in a transitional Ireland: statistics, activism – and flies’ in Mary Hatfield, Jutta Kruse, and Ríona Nic Conghail, editors, Historical Perspectives on Parenthood and Childhood in Ireland, Arlen House, Dublin, 2018.
‘Captain King Elmes: an Irish medical doctor dies at Messines’ in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway, editors, Country House at War, Four Courts Press, 2016.
‘Stacking the coffins: the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in Dublin’ in Lisa Marie Griffith and Ciaran Wallace, editors, Grave Matters: death and dying in Dublin 1500 – 2000, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2016.
‘Influenza: the Irish Local Government Board’s Last Great Crisis,’ in Virginia Crossman and Sean Lucey, editors, Healthcare in Ireland and Britain 1850-1970: voluntary, regional and comparative perspectives. London, IHR, 2015.
‘Through the eyes of a child: childhood experience of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic’ in Anne McLellan and Alice Mauger (eds.) Growing Pains: Childhood Illness in Ireland 1750-1950, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2013.
‘”The sense of history”: Independent Newspapers as employer’ in Mark O’Brien and Kevin Rafter (eds.) Independent Newspapers. A History, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012.
Martin Gorsky, Bernard Harris, Patricia Marsh and Ida Milne, ‘The 1918/19 Influenza Pandemic & COVID-19 in Ireland and the UK’, Historical Social Research Supplement 33 (2021) doi: 10.12759/hsr.suppl.33.2021.193-226.
Ida Milne, ‘Days of Fever: Ireland and India in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic’, Jesus and Mary College Review, New Delhi, November 2019.
Milne, Ida, ‘Gender, hierarchies and change: Independent Newspapers since the 1960s’ in Saothar, the Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, 39, 2015.
Milne, Ida, The 1918-19 influenza pandemic: a Kildare perspective of a global disaster 301-315, Kildare Archaeological Society Journal, 2012-2013, vol XX.
Select popular publications
Ida Milne, ‘The pandemic patient: long term impacts of the 1918-19 influenza ‘ De Gruyter e-books: 13 Humanities responses to the Covid-19 pandemic:11, De Gruyter, 2020.
‘Shopping trips to New York’, in Brian Lucey, Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien, editors, Recalling the Celtic Tiger, Peter Lang, 2019.
Selection of Covid-19 pandemic newspaper articles or blog posts:
https://definingmomentscanada.ca/news/archiving-covid-19/ https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/features/tackling-covid-19- what-we-can-learn-from-the-1918-spanish-flu-987961.html https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/flu-epidemic-of-1918-warns-us-of-coronavirus- risk-to-frontline-workers-1.4216014 https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0323/1124810-documenting-corononavirus- future-history/ https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0304/1120278-what-history-tells-us-about-health- panics/ https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0309/1121159-ireland-1918-flu-pandemic/ https://www.irishhumanities.com/blog/new-blog-article-6/ https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/just-how-scared-should-we-be-of-wuhan-coronavirus-1.4162908 https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/flu-epidemic-of-1918-warns-us-of-coronavirus-risk-to-frontline-workers-1.4216014
Ida Milne, ‘The pandemic patient: long term impacts of the 1918-19 influenza ‘ De Gruyter e-books: 13 Humanities responses to the Covid-19 pandemic:11, De Gruyter, 2020.
‘Shopping trips to New York’, in Brian Lucey, Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien, editors, Recalling the Celtic Tiger, Peter Lang, 2019.
https://definingmomentscanada.ca/news/archiving-covid-19/
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0323/1124810-documenting-corononavirus- future-history/
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0304/1120278-what-history-tells-us-about-health- panics/
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0309/1121159-ireland-1918-flu-pandemic/
https://www.irishhumanities.com/blog/new-blog-article-6/
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/just-how-scared-should-we-be-of-wuhan-coronavirus-1.4162908
TG4 , May 2022, Eipidéim, two part documentary on epidemic disease.
RTE Prime Time February 2022 on the end of pandemics, with Peter Hotez and Rodney Rohde.
RTE Claire Byrne Live February 2022 on creating a Covid time capsule.
RTE Nationwide November 2021 Interviewed by Donal Byrne on Protestant attitudes to the Anglo Irish Treaty.
RTE 1 Ten things about Science series, broadcast December 2019, interviewed on vaccination hesitancy and the re-emergence of measles as a health threat; repeated May 2020.
BBCNI News: Interview May 2020 on corona virus.
RTE 1 Nationwide corona virus and pandemic influenza segment, updated from May 2018 on 3 April 2020.
RTE 1, After the Rising, Interviewed by Catriona Crowe on the great flu pandemic, January 2019. Nationwide
RTE1 (interviewed by Donal Byrne) on the great flu pandemic, May 2018.
RTE Sean O’Rourke show https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21759880
BBC NI podcast, The New Normal. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089rw8b
BBC Radio 4 three part series, Pandemic 1918, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jhnc
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0323/1124810-documenting-corononavirus-future-history/
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/lessons-we-can-learn-from-the-spanish-flu-39045224.html
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0304/1120278-what-history-tells-us-about-health-panics/
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0309/1121159-ireland-1918-flu-pandemic/
2022 May, invited speaker, Carlow Kilkenny Clinicians on ‘The end of pandemics’.
2022 April, invited speaker, Castledermot History Society. ‘Lessons from 1918-19, on the end of pandemics.’
2022 February, invited respondent representing AHSS, to keynote Professor Trish Greenhalgh, at the launch of the multidisciplinary Irish Research Council DOROTHY Covid-19 funding call. 2022 February, invited plenary panellist with Dr Kevin O’Sullivan, Dr Mobeen Hussein, and
Professor Patrick Geoghegan at the Irish History Students’ Association Conference public history seminar.
2021 December, invited plenary panellist at the inaugural Council of Europe Observatory on History Teaching in Europe annual conference, on Why Teach Pandemic History? 2021 November, European Public Health Association Conference: Pre conference symposium invited speaker.
2021 November, REFOHCUS UCD Veterinary College, invited speaker on history of disease.
2021 October Anglo Irish UCC Treaty Conference, moderator of panel of treaty negotiators’ families reflecting on the impact on their lives.
2021 October, Oral History Association (USA) paper, ‘Changing memory of the 1918- 19 Pandemic’. 2021, August, invited speaker at Social Democrats’ Summer School. ‘What can we learn from pandemic history?’ 2021 Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, panellist at presentation of Charles Cameron Public Health Award to Dr Mike Ryan, with Professor Emer Shelley, Dean of Public Health, Royal College of Physicians, and Dr Ciaran Wallace, TCD Dept of History. 2021 Royal Irish Academy Covid Conversations series, panellist with Dr Mike Ryan of WHO, Professor Svenn-Erik Mamelund of Oslo Metropolitan University, and Professor Grace Mulcahy of UCD Veterinary School.
2021 Royal College of Physicians vaccination seminar: panellist with Professor Luke O’Neill and Dr Anne Moore, both immunologists, and RCPI archivist Harriet Wheelock. The seminar was chaired by Professor Mary Horgan, RCPI president, and Professor Karina Butler, chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee.
2021 June, keynote speaker at the Association of Archivists’ annual meeting, on archiving pandemics. 2021 June, ACIS annual meeting paper, ‘Changing memory of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic’. 2021 March, ESSHC paper ‘Infectious disease and public history.’
2020 November Irish Standing Committee of the Association of Anaesthetists, plenary speaker. 2020 Dublin Festival of History: Grangegorman Histories’ discussion on institutional experiences of pandemics with Dr Catriona Crowe, Dr Cillian de Gascun, Dr Ida Milne, Professor Luke O’Neill, MRIA and Fintan O’Toole.
2020 Dublin Festival of History: Author interview, (interviewed by Dr Sarah Anne Buckley, NUIG). 2020 Galway arts festival, invited speaker with Fergal Bowers and Dr Caitriona Clear, September.
2020 Association of Physicians of Britain and Ireland, invited speaker.
2020 De Gruyter summer series author interview invited speaker, July. 2020 June, OHNI Seminar on Pandemics, invited speaker. 2020 June, University of Shanghai, Global Health History Group Seminar, invited speaker.
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2020 May, Manchester University Armchair Series, invited author talk on Stacking the Coffins, influenza war and revolution in Ireland, 1918-19. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stacking-Coffins-Influenza-Revolution- Ireland/dp/1526122693
2020 April, Covid-19 Irish Army Taskforce Talk on how the 1918-19 pandemic can inform the current crisis. 2020 April Laois libraries talk on Corona virus and Pandemic influenza (by Facebook). 2020 March Trinity Long Room Hub Zoom seminar on Plagues and Pandemics Behind the Headlines (chaired by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, invited speaker).
2020 January, Newcastle University history seminar series: Invited speaker on sensitive interviewing. 2019 December, Goethe University, Frankfurt, invited speaker at pandemic influenza memory workshop.
2019 November, Jonathan Swift Festival, St Patrick’s Cathedral, invited panellist with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, and economist David McWilliams, on Irish Protestant identity. 2019 November, RDS Lecture Series hosted by John Bowman, Invited speaker, with Ian d’Alton, on ‘Protestant and Irish.’
BA in Humanities (Oscail), NUIM, 2004. MA in Modern History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2005. PhD, Trinity College, Dublin, 2011 for her dissertation ‘The 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Ireland: a Leinster Perspective’.
