Dr. Jane Gray

Professional History

I was awarded the Ph.D. by Johns Hopkins University in 1991.  Before joining the Department of Sociology at NUI Maynooth in 1994, I was an Assistant Professor at Indiana University South Bend, in the United States.  I was appointed Senior Lecturer at NUIM in 2005. 

Research Interests

My research centres on questions relating to families, households and social change.  I adopt a comparative-historical approach towards increasing our understanding of the changing shape of families and households in modern societies, with a particular emphasis on the Irish case. I have become increasingly interested in the potential of life history approaches for developing explanations of how and why people adopt innovative family life strategies in the context of changing social and economic environments.  I also have a growing interest in qualitative and mixed-method research strategies.

Teaching and Other Activities

This academic year (2011-12) I am teaching SO312 Sociology of the Family and a Special Topics Research Seminar on Family Histories and Social Change.  I also contribute to modules in the M.A. on Societies in Transition, the M.A. on Society and Space and the structured Ph.D. programme.

I am the programme leader for the Irish Qualitative Data Archive hosted at NUIM by the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, and funded under the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions Cycles 4 and 5.   IQDA is the central access point for qualitative social science research data generated in Ireland, including interviews, images and other non-numerical material.

Current Research Projects

Family Rhythms: Using Archived Qualitative Data to Examine the Changing Texture of Family Life in Ireland (Principal Investigator.  Post-Doctoral Researcher: Dr. David Ralph.  Funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2011-2012). 

The ‘Family Rhythms’ project will develop a new understanding of family change in Ireland, drawing on qualitative (non-numeric) data that have been recently deposited in the Irish Qualitative Data Archive.  We aim to publish a major new book on Irish families that will be of interest to policy makers and the general public, as well as being useful for university courses.  We will also share our experience of re-using archived qualitative data through workshops and modules designed to encourage postgraduate students, academics and other researchers to share and re-use data.

Digital Repository of Ireland (Core Researcher.  Funded by the Irish Government under PRTLI Cycle 5)

DRI will be the digital infrastructure that links together and preserves the rich and varied cultural, historical, and qualitative social science data, and provides a central access point and multimedia tools to research and interact with archived data. DRI will allow the public, students and scholars to access and research the history, cultural heritage and social life of Ireland in ways never possible before.

 DRI funded partners are the Royal Irish Academy (RIA, lead institute), National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM), Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), and National College of Art and Design (NCAD).

A Life History Approach to Social Change in Twentieth Century Ireland. (Joint Principal Investigator with Professor Sean O’Riain.  Funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2005-2008). 

The project makes a contribution to the research infrastructure of Irish social science by developing a database of life history interviews, drawn from a nationally representative sample of respondents to the Irish module of the European Community Household Panel (Living in Ireland Survey, 1994-2001).  We have collected 120 detailed life history narratives, event history calendars and simple retrospective network schedules from respondents in three birth cohorts: before 1935; 1945-1954; 1965-1974.  The life history narratives are available for re-use through the Irish Qualitative Data Archive.  We continue to analyse the data and prepare scholarly research outputs for publication.

Recent Publications

Books

(with Mary P. Corcoran and Michel Peillon). 2010. Suburban Affiliations: Social Relations in the Greater Dublin Area. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press and Dublin: UCD Press.

2005. Spinning the Threads of Uneven Development: Gender and Industrialization in Ireland During the Long Eighteenth Century. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.

   Recent peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in edited collections

(with Aileen O'Carroll). Forthcoming. "Education and Class Formation in 20th Century Ireland: A Retrospective Qualitative Longitudinal Analysis." Sociology.

Forthcoming. "Household-formation, Class-Formation and Inheritance in 19th Century Ireland." Brepols Publishers.

(with Aileen O'Carroll). 2010/2011. "Qualitative Research in Ireland: Archiving Strategies and Development." IASSIST Quarterly 34, 3& 5 and 35, 1&2:18-22.

A full list of my publications may be found on the university Research Information System.