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Irish Genealogy Essentials Winter 2024-2025

An Online Family History Course
IGE 2024 Reduced

Overview

New for 2024-25

  • All lectures have been re-recorded and updated for our 2024-25 essentials course!
  • Get the chance to sit down and have a one-to-one virtual consultation* with one of Ulster Historical Foundation’s genealogists.* During the consultation you will receive personal research advice and guidance from an experienced member of our dedicated team who will use their knowledge and archival experience to help solve your family tree puzzle.
  • Interactive digital "workshop" session, demonstrating the practical use of online resources

* Note: the personal consultations will be scheduled once the course has concluded.

What to expect from our online courses?

The knowledge you gain from our online Irish Genealogy Essentials course will help you get to grips with research techniques, archives and genealogical sources in Ireland; provide you with the information and skills to further explore your family history and help you find your elusive Irish and Scots-Irish ancestors.

Priced at £374.99 (Guild £349.99) our online Irish Genealogy Essentials course takes all the key components of our normal in-person courses and makes them available digitally allowing participants to complete the programme at their own pace and from the comfort of their own home.

This course consists of:

  • More than 21 pre-recorded lectures on essential topics relating to Irish genealogical research (over 28 hours of content)
  • Plus two new bonus presentations that will be released to participants after the course has started
  • NEW for 2024 - One interactive (i.e. live but also recorded) digital "workshop" session, demonstrating the practical use of online resources discussed in the various presentations
  • Three live "Q and A" sessions/Tutorials with the course lecturers (to be scheduled at different times to suit different time zones)
  • Downloadable lecture handouts and reading list

This course will go live on 17 November 2024. Although participants will have 24/7 access to the various lectures and can watch these talks as often as they care to, the course will end on 31 January 2025 meaning that after this date these lectures will no longer be accessible.

There will be four Q and A sessions, scheduled at different times to suit participants in different time zones. Dates will be confirmed closer to the time.

Questions for these sessions need to be submitted in advance. Details on how to do this will be made available after registration.

Lectures

Speakers

  • William Roulston head shot
    William Roulston grew up on the family farm at Bready, County Tyrone. He joined the Ulster Historical Foundation as a researcher in 1997, becoming Research Officer in 2002 and Research Director in 2006. He was awarded a PhD in Archaeology by Queen’s University Belfast in 2004 for a thesis on the provision, building and architecture of Anglican churches in the north of Ireland, 1600–1740. He is involved in a number of organisations in the heritage field and serves as a Member of Council of both the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society and the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland and is the Convener of the Reformed Presbyterian Church History Committee. He has lectured widely on a range of historical and genealogical subjects in the UK, Ireland and North America. William is the author of a number of books looking at different aspects of the history of Ireland and the sources for its study, including Restoration Strabane, 1660–1714 (2007), Three Centuries of Life in a Tyrone Parish ... Donagheady, 1600–1900 (2010), Abercorn: the Hamiltons of Barons Court (2014), Foyle Valley Covenanters (2015), Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, 1600–1800 (2nd edition, 2018), Researching Presbyterian Ancestors in Ireland (2020) and Researching Farming Ancestors in Ireland (2021). He was co-editor of Fermanagh: History and Society (2004), Transatlantic Lives: The Irish Experience in Colonial America (2019) and Lough Neagh: An Atlas of the Natural, Built and Cultural Heritage (2022), and co-author of Exiles of ’98: Ulster Presbyterians and the United States (2018).
    Dr William Roulston
  • Fintan Headshot
    Fintan Mullan is Executive Director of Ulster Historical Foundation, which he joined in 1995, and has been responsible for the management of this successful Belfast-based, educational non-profit since 2001. He has extensive experience in Irish family history research and is a regular international speaker on Irish genealogy, having spoken in Ireland, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and most of the lower 48 states of the USA. He has managed the production of over 150 Irish history and genealogy titles. Fintan has helped to ensure that the Foundation has been at the forefront of developments in Irish genealogy, including heritage tourism products and the provision of online resources. He helped to pioneer www.rootsireland.ie, the unique database with over 22 million Irish historical records. He is a non-executive director of the Irish Family History Foundation.
    Fintan Mullan
  • Gillian Hunt
    Gillian Hunt is Research Officer with the Ulster Historical Foundation and manages the Foundation’s many genealogical activities; she has been with the Foundation since 2001. As well as managing the genealogy side of the Foundation's work, Gillian carries out research for clients and is a hugely experienced user of the General Register Office and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland where she sits on PRONI’s Stakeholder Forum. She regularly teaches courses in Northern Ireland and gives talks on family history in the rest of Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, co-presenting our annual North American lecture tours since 2013. Gillian also co-delivered (with Fintan Mullan) the British Institute’s week-long Irish genealogy course in Salt Lake City in October 2018 (hosted by the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History) and will be teaching this course again in October 2022. Gillian has carried out the research for a number of television programmes, as well as appearing in several, most recently BBC’s ‘Stephen Nolan: Ulster-Scots, My Family and Me’
    Gillian Hunt

Resources

Classroom

Irish Genealogy Essentials - Online Classroom