About

Dr Áine Foley is a self-employed historical researcher and genealogist. She completed her PhD on the royal manors of county Dublin during the late medieval period at Trinity College Dublin in 2010 and since then has published widely in the field of medieval history. Her book The Royal Manors of medieval Co. Dublin: Crown & Community was published by Four Courts Press in 2013. She is currently conducting research on violence in late medieval Ireland.

During 2010-11 she worked as a research assistant on the IRCHSS funded Irish Chancery Project (CIRCLE). The aim of this project was to reconstruct medieval Irish chancery rolls that were destroyed by fire in the Four Courts in 1922, using copies, transcripts and calendars ranging in date from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. This calendar was launched online in May 2012 (https://chancery.tcd.ie/) and a three-volume print edition is in preparation and will be published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission. She also conducted place-name research on the same project.

The first major project Dr Foley has worked on as a self-employed researcher was an investigation of the abbey of St Thomas the martyr in Dublin, on behalf of Dubin City Council. She wrote a report on the abbey: the first section of this report examined the topography of the abbey and its environs. The second section investigated the history of the abbey, from the late twelfth century, up to its dissolution in the mid-sixteenth century.

Between 2011 and 2016 she was honorary secretary of the Friends of Medieval Dublin. Between 2013 and 2016 she was the principal organiser of the Milestones of Medieval Dublin lunchtime lectures, which took place in the Wood Quay Venue between June and December.

Before embarking on her post-graduate degree she spent several years working on archaeological digs.