As part of our weekly supplement with the Irish Times Abroad, we have explored the lives of many extraordinary Irish emigrants throughout history. From the pioneering Irishwomen who made exciting Space discoveries to the Irish-American boxer who became a world champion, discover their stories of adventure, opportunity and tragedy.
The Irishman who wrote The Red Flag
Date published: 21 Feb 2022
The Dubliner determined to end Irish involvement in the ‘sin of slavery’
Date published: 8 Feb 2022
The Irishman who fought with Mandela for freedom
Date published: 11 Jan 2022
I am Irish and I shall ever be, said the woman who campaigned to end slavery
Date published: 21 Dec 2021
The Irish family who added to the Australian vernacular
Date published: 8 Dec 2021
The man who sent Ned Kelly to the gallows
Date published: 26 Oct 2021
The last Irish-born mayor of New York City
Date published: 12 Oct 2021
The polyglot Irishman who valued the language of others
Date published: 23 Sep 2021
The son of Irish emigrants who built Australia’s largest manufacturing company
Date published: 26 Aug 2021
‘I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline’: How an Irish family was shipwrecked
Date published: 20 Jul 2021
Ireland’s remarkable trans pioneer: ‘People thought I was a woman, but I was just me’
Date published: 1 Jun 2021
The Russian-Irish filmmaker whose magical movies shaped Soviet childhoods
Date published: 18 May 2021
Designed in Ireland, assembled in Australia, pointed at the stars
Date published: 20 Apr 2021
The Antrim-born mystic, republican and lover of folklore who found freedom in California
Date published: 6 Apr 2021
The patriotic cellist who refused to play Rule, Britannia!
Date published: 11 Aug 2020
Nancy Cunard, the interwar poet and rebel descended from Robert Emmet’s family
Date published: 4 August 2020
The bard from Ballymena who got too homesick in Canada
Date published: 28 July 2020
The Dublin-born journalist who became a foreign correspondent in Imperial Russia
Date published: 22 July 2020
‘Mother Mooney’, the Mayo woman who campaigned for justice for her wronged son
Date published: 14 July 2020
The Irish-American who led the last invasion of Britain
Date published: 8 July 2020
The Dublin inventor who was an early pioneer of high-speed photography
Date published: 29 June 2020
The Irishman who was one of Britain’s most prominent spies
Date published: 22 June 2020
The Tipperary man who fell in love while fighting in the Spanish Civil War
Date published: 16 June 2020
The Irishwoman who became known as ‘the White Woman of the Genesee’
Date published: 12 June 2020
The Irishman known as the ‘Prince of Pickpockets’ who became a policeman
Date published: 1 June 2020
The Irishwoman who quit teaching to become one of Ireland’s first blues singers
Date published: 26 May 2020
The Irish-American who became the first millionaire west of the Mississippi
Date published: 15 May 2020
The Greystones woman who climbed the Alps in long skirts to avoid scandal
Date published: 27 April 2020
The man who left life as a barrister to become British envoy to Afghanistan
Date published: 20 April 2020
The Irish soldier and police officer who became an Australian explorer
Date published: 7 April 2020
The Wine Geese: Irish exiles who started new lives in French vineyards
Date published: 2 April 2020
Typhoid Mary: The Irishwoman blamed for bringing a deadly disease to New York
Date published: 24 March 2020
The Waterford woman who put Ireland on the international fashion map
Date published: 18 March 2020
Fake arms, fake pregnancy, fake husband: How an Irishwoman became a top pickpocket
Date published: 3 March 2020
The Dubliner who became a ‘master of illusion’ in landscape gardening in England
Date published: 26 February 2020
The forgotten Irishwoman who once ruled the New York fashion industry
Date published: 18 February 2020
The Waterford man who married Napoleon Bonaparte’s niece
Date published: 11 February 2020
The Irishwoman who was the world’s first female stockbroker
Date published: 31 January 2020
Six forgotten Irish women who achieved the extraordinary
Date published: 28 January 2020
The Irish professor involved in introducing European animals to Australia
Date published: 21 January 2020
The Tipperary politician behind a huge Irish banking scandal
Date published: 15 January 2020
Irish v English prizefighters: eye-gouging, kicking and sword fighting
Date published: 9 January 2020
The mysterious Irishman who was the first westerner ordained a Buddhist monk
Date published: 3 January 2020
The story of Walter Butler of Roscrea who died on Christmas Day
Date published: 27 January 2019
The life of the Irishwoman who was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame
Date published: 18 December 2019
Alice Stopford Green: A forgotten historian of the Irish people
Date published: 2 December 2019
From Roscommon to Hollywood – The story of Maureen O’Sullivan
Date published: 26 November 2019
Raymond Chandler: Crime writer’s family left Waterford, but the city never left him
Date published: 15 November 2019
Irish workers abroad shaped the pathways later emigrants followed
Date published: 5 November 2019
How tales of the headless horseman came from Celtic mythology
Date published: 23 October 2019
The murdered Carlow man who shaped the silent movie era of Hollywood
Date published: 15 October 2019
The Irishman who became a Spanish captain and fought Cromwell’s army
Date published: 1 October 2019
Barry Fitzgerald: the civil servant who became one of Ireland’s first Hollywood stars
Date published: 24 September 2019
How an Offaly man revolutionised naval warfare and marine transport
Date published: 17 September 2019
Edward Quinn, the Dublin-born photographer of the rich and famous
Date published: 10 September 2019
The grandson of an Irish nationalist who became ‘Boy Mayor of New York’
Date published: 3 September 2019
The Mayo woman who became Italy’s favourite operatic diva
Date published: 28 August 2019
The Irishman who lived through rebellions, plague and fall of the Qing Dynasty
Date published: 20 August 2019
The Irish-Jewish music stars of the Tin Pan Alley years
Date published: 13 August 2019
The story of Irish astronomer Rose O’Halloran
Date published: 6 August 2019
GAA Abroad: How Irish immigrants shared their sporting passions and skills
Date published: 30 July 2019
Maureen O’Hara: ‘An Irishwoman has guts and stands up for what she believes in.’
Date published: 23 July 2019
The Irishman who rose to the very top of the Spanish royal court
Date published: 9 July 2019
Life of Irishman Timothy Eaton from apprentice to one of Canada’s wealthiest people
Date published: 2 July 2019
The Irish LGBT diaspora: Dusty Springfield, Eileen Gray, Fr Bernard Lynch
Date published: 25 June 2019
The Irish who instigated the Portland Rum Riots
Date published: 5 June 2019
The Scotch-Irish author of America’s best-selling reading primer
Date published: 27 May 2019
The Irish nun who opened schools for the deaf in Australia
Date published: 22 May 2019
Elizabeth Bowen, the Big House heiress with the ‘constricted mind.’
Date published: 15 May 2019
Maggie Cline, Vaudeville queen who based career on Ireland despite never having been
Date published: 23 April 2019
Spike Milligan, recipient of awards for contribution to British comedy, but an Irish writer
Date published: 16 April 2019
Dion Boucicault, the Irish playwright whose life was stranger than fiction
Date published: 9 April 2019
Johnny Patterson, the Irish singing clown who met a tragic end
Date published: 2 April 2019
The Waterford naval officer who became first governor of New Zealand
Date published: 26 March 2019
The Irish naval officers in Imperial Russia
Date published: 19 March 2019
Beatrice Grimshaw, the Belfast explorer treated as a ‘male chief’ of Samoa
Date published: 5 March 2019
Harry Ferguson, the ‘Mad Mechanic’ who invented the modern tractor
Date published: 26 February 2019
‘Bad Bridgets’: The criminal and deviant Irish women convicted in America
Date published: 20 February 2019
The Carlow man who became a US founding father (and one of the biggest slave owners)
Date published: 12 February 2019
The Westmeath emigrant who found himself at the heart of the Napoleonic wars
Date published: 5 February 2019
Thomas Heazle Parke, the first Irishman to cross Africa
Date published: 29 January 2019
Mary Swanzy, one of Ireland’s leading modernist painters
Date published: 9 January 2019
Mary Lee, the Irish woman who campaigned for women’s rights in Australia
Date published: 2 January 2019
Mabel Cahill, Irish tennis champion who won five US Opens
Date published: 19 December 2018
How treasured objects help us create a home away from home
Date published: 11 December 2018
Cinderella Man’ James Braddock, the Irish-American boxer who became world champion
Date published: 5 December 2018
Annie Besant, the first Irish woman to endorse birth control
Date published: 27 November 2018
Josephine Hart, writer and ‘heroine’ who inspired Herstory
Date published: 20 November 2018
Fanny Durack, the Irish-Australian who won the first women’s Olympic swimming medal
Date published: 13 November 2018
Flora Sandes, the only female British soldier to fight for the Allies in WWI
Date published: 7 November 2018
Daisy Bates, the Edwardian Irishwoman in the Australian Outback
Date published: 23 October 2018
The Irish-American who invented the modern tattoo machine
Date published: 16 October 2018
The pioneering Irishwomen who made exciting Space discoveries
Date published: 8 October 2018
Peg Woffington, the best Irish actress of the 18th century
Date published: 3 October 2018
Florence Burke, American Civil War soldier and my great-great-grandfather
Date published: 19 September 2018
Remembering Fr. Mychal Judge, the Irish-American priest killed on 9/11
Date published: 11 September 2018
Lady Edith Blake, Irish polyglot, botanical artist and travel writer
Date published: 5 September 2018
The stories behind the objects migrants take with them
Date published: 15 August 2018
The only Irish officer to fight in the Battle of Little Bighorn
Date published: 8 August 2018
The Irish nun who survived floods, famines and shipwrecks
Date published: 25 July 2018
Mike ‘King’ Kelly, the Irish-American baseball star who inspired the first pop song
Date published: 18 July 2018
The Irishman who ‘invented’ milk chocolate, and served the royal family
Date published: 11 July 2018
The only Wimbledon finalist to be convicted of murder was an Irish man
Date published: 4 July 2018
The crossdresser from Dublin who tricked the British Army
Date published: 27 June 2018
Kay McNulty, the Irish ‘mother of computer programming’
Date published: 20 June 2018
Was ‘Crusher’ Casey Ireland’s greatest emigrant sportsman?
Date published: 15 June 2018
Monica de Wichfeld: Chanel designer, gun-runner, and rebel to the end
Date published: 30 May 2018
The famine-era migrant who became the greatest showman
Date published: 23 May 2018
Irishwoman Ann Glover, the last person hanged for witchcraft in Boston
Date published: 16 May 2018
Jimmy Gralton, the only Irishman ever deported from Ireland
Date published: 10 May 2018