The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2024 – 2025 lecture series continues at 8 pm on Friday, April 25th, when Dr Angela Byrne, will deliver a talk titled
‘The tsar is far away’:
Revd Robert Walsh, a Waterford chaplain in Romanov Russia
in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61).
This talk will focus on the Waterford-born Reverend Robert Walsh (1772–1852), who was a member of the British and Foreign Bible Society and lived in St Petersburg in 1825–6. Walsh published an account of his experiences and impressions of Russia which reveals his understanding of the role of the Orthodox Church in the growing empire and autocratic state. His thoughts on Russian serfdom informed his later investigation of slavery in Brazil.
Dr Angela Byrne is a historian of women, migration, and travel and exploration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has published widely on these topics. She is an editor with the Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy) and has previously held research and lecturing positions at the universities of Toronto, Greenwich, Ulster and Maynooth, and EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2021 and is a former Marie Curie Fellow.
