Sparky Booker
Dr
Sparky Booker (sparky.booker@dcu.ie) is a historian of law, culture and society in late medieval Ireland. She is an Assistant Professor in history at the School of History and Geography at Dublin City University. Before she took this post in 2021, she was a lecturer in medieval Irish history at Queen’s University Belfast from 2016. From 2014-2016 she served as a postdoctoral research associate at Swansea University researching female plaintiffs in the secular and ecclesiastical courts of Ireland from c. 1350- c.1530.
Sparky has published on many aspects of late medieval Irish history and is the author of Cultural Exchange and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland: the English and Irish of the Four obedient shires (2018), published by Cambridge University Press in their ‘Studies in Medieval Life and Thought’ series. This monograph was awarded the James S. Donnelly Prize and Donald Murphy Prize from the American Conference for Irish Studies in 2019. She was also the editor of Tales of Medieval Dublin (2014). She is on the committee of the Friends of Medieval Dublin and the Irish Legal History Society.
Book
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Sparky Booker (2018) Cultural exchange and identity in late medieval Ireland: the English and Irish of the four obedient shires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Link] | |
| 2014 | Sparky Booker; Cherie N. Peters (2014) Tales of Medieval Dublin. Dublin: Four Courts Press. |
Peer Reviewed Journal
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Sparky Booker (2022) 'The challenge of writing histories of ‘women’: the case of women and the law in late medieval Ireland'. Irish Historical Studies, . | |
| 2021 | Sparky Booker (2021) 'Mantles, moustaches and saffron shirts: what motivated sumptuary law in medieval English Ireland?'. Speculum, 96 (3):726-770. [Link] | |
| 2014 | Sparky Booker (2014) 'Irish clergy and the diocesan church in the 'four obedient shires' of Ireland, 1399-1534'. Irish Historical Studies, 154 :179-209. | |
| 2013 | Sparky Booker (2013) 'Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the 'four obedient shires''. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY SECTION C-ARCHAEOLOGY CELTIC STUDIES HISTORY LINGUISTICS LITERATURE, 113 :219-250. |
Book Chapter
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Sparky Booker; Matthew Stevens (2022) ''Irishtowns’ and ‘Welsh Streets’: ethnic enclaves within the towns of colonial Ireland and Wales in a northern-European colonial context' In: Towns on the edge in Medieval Europe, Proceedings of British Academy. Oxford : Oxford University Press. [Link] | |
| 2021 | Sparky Booker (2021) 'Widowhood and attainder in medieval Ireland: the case of Margaret Nugent' In: Litigating women: gender and justice in Europe, c.1300-c.1800. Oxfordshire : Routledge. [Link] | |
| 2019 | Sparky Booker (2019) 'Marriage litigation in Medieval Ireland' In: Marriage and the Irish. Dublin : Wordwell. [Link] | |
| 2017 | Sparky Booker; Roman Bleier; Caoimhe Whelan; Eoin O'Flynn; Christina Wade; Cherie N. Peters (2017) 'Writing history in the digital age: the Battle of Clontarf goes online' In: Medieval Dublin XVI. Dublin : Four Courts Press. | |
| 2016 | Sparky Booker (2016) 'The Geraldines and the Irish: intermarriage, ecclesiastical patronage and status' In: The Geraldines and medieval Ireland: the making of a myth. Dublin : Four Courts Press. [Link] | |
| 2014 | Sparky Booker (2014) 'The Knight's Tale' In: Tales of Medieval Dublin. Dublin : Four Courts Press. | |
| 2010 | Sparky Booker (2010) 'Gaelicisation and cultural exchange in late medieval Dublin' In: Medieval Dublin X. Dublin : Four Courts Press. | |
| 2010 | Sparky Booker (2010) 'Ashamed of their very English names? Identity and the use of Irish names by the English of late medieval Ireland' In: Umstrittene Zugehorigkeiten Spatmittelalterliche Praktiken der Namengebung im Europaischen Vergleich. Konstanz : UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH. |
Web Page
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Sparky Booker; Roman Bleier; Cherie N. Peters; Caoimhe Whelan; Christina Wade; Eoin O'Flynn (2014) The Battle of Clontarf. WEBP [Link] |
Book Review
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Sparky Booker (2019) The making of medieval Derry by Ciarán Devlin. BREV | |
| 2019 | Sparky Booker (2019) French in medieval Ireland, Ireland in medieval French by Keith Busby. BREV [Link] | |
| 2019 | Sparky Booker (2019) Agricultural and settlement in Ireland, Space and Settlement in medieval Ireland and Soldiers of Christ (Review). BREV [Link] | |
| 2018 | Sparky Booker (2018) Gerald of Wales: New Perspectives on a medieval writer and critic, ed. Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen. BREV [Link] | |
| 2018 | Sparky Booker (2018) William Marshal and Ireland, eds John Bradley, Cóilin ? Drisceoil and Michael Potterton. BREV [Link] | |
| 2016 | Sparky Booker (2016) Anglo-Norman Parks in medieval Ireland by Fiona Beglane. BREV [Link] | |
| 2015 | Sparky Booker (2015) Women, Agency and the Law, 1300-1700 eds Bronach Kane and Fiona Williamson. BREV [Link] | |
| 2015 | Sparky Booker (2015) Medieval Dublin XIV, ed. Seán Duffy. BREV [Link] | |
| 2014 | Sparky Booker (2014) Crisis and survival in late medieval Ireland by Brendan Smith. BREV | |
| 2013 | Sparky Booker (2013) The Battle of Clontarf: Good Friday 1014 by Darren McGettigan. BREV [Link] |
Honors and Awards
Outreach Activities
Research Interests
Irish Social History
Irish Medieval History
History of Women and Gender
Legal History
Research Projects
Teaching Interests
- Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Authority) since 2019
- Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching, QUB (2019)
- Research supervision training, QUB (2017)
- Certificate in ‘Teaching and Support Learning’ from the TCD Centre for Academic Practice and eLearning (2014)