Dr. Anna Moran
BA Hons (NUI), MA(RCA), PhD
LecturerDr Anna Moran is a design and material culture historian with a particular interest in craft history. Anna has completed degrees at University College Dublin, the Royal College of Art (V&A/RCA MA in History of Design) and the University of Warwick (PhD). Her PhD research explored the design, making and use of glass in Ireland during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Stemming from this research, Anna has published and lectured on related topics including glassmaking, retailing, dining and furnishing the domestic interior in Georgian Ireland. Recent publications include contributions to anthologies such as Speculative Minds in Georgian Ireland: Novelty, Experiment and Widening Horizons (Four Courts Press, 2023) and In Sparkling Company: Reflections of Glass in the 18th-Century British World (Corning Museum of Glass, 2020). She is also co-editor, with Sorcha O’Brien, of Love Objects: Emotion, Design and Material Culture (Bloomsbury, 2014).
In her role as Lecturer at NCAD, Anna teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and has supervised a number of postgraduate dissertations (MA and PhD) to completion. She was Programme Leader of the MA Design History and Material Culture from 2006–2016 and again in 2023–2024.
Anna also has research interests in the areas of twentieth-century and contemporary Irish craft practice. She has published on the Kilkenny Design Workshops and in 2018 Anna co-curated (with Wendy Williams) the exhibition ‘The Maker’s Hand: 50 years of the RDS Craft Awards’ at the RDS, Dublin.
In her role as Lecturer at NCAD, Anna has supervised a number of postgraduate dissertations (MA and PhD) to completion. She sits on the Editorial Board of Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies and has acted as a reader / peer-reviewer for a number of academic journals. She was a member of the Board of the Glass Society of Ireland (2020-2023) and as part of her work for this society, she was Chair of the Editorial Board of Glass Ireland. Anna’s research has been supported by grants and scholarships from the Irish Georgian Society, the Hunt Museum, the Friends of the V&A and the Thomas Dammann Memorial Trust.
Edited books
Moran, Anna and O’Brien, Sorcha eds. (2014) Love Objects: Emotion, Design and Material Culture, Bloomsbury: London. (A Chinese language edition of this anthology was published in 2021).
Essays in books and catalogues
Moran, Anna (2023) ‘A Brittle Business: Charles Mulvany and the Dublin glass industry, c.1780 – c.1840’ in Toby Barnard and Alison FitzGerald (eds) Speculative Minds in Georgian Ireland: Novelty, Experiment and Widening Horizons, Four Courts Press.
Moran, Anna (2020) ‘ “The eye as well as the appetite must be car’d for”: Glass and Dining in Ireland, 1680–1830’ in C. L. Maxwell (ed.), In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the Eighteenth-Century British World (New York, 2020), pp. 194-229.
Moran, Anna (2019) ‘Introduction’ in Ireland Glass Biennale 2019, a catalogue to accompany the Ireland Glass Biennale 2019 exhibition, Dublin Castle, pp. 13-14.
Moran, Anna (2013) ‘Enduring skill: Industry, craft, history and the future’ in R. de Buitléar (ed.) Caution Fragile. Irish Glass: Tradition in Transition, a catalogue to accompany a touring exhibition of contemporary Irish glass. Exhibited at the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, US and the National Museum of Ireland.
Moran, Anna (2011) ‘Tradition in the Service of Modernity: Kilkenny Design Workshops and Selling Irish Design at American Department Store Promotions, 1967-76’ in L. King and E. Sisson (eds) Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922-92, Cork University Press, pp. 191-211.
Moran, Anna (2011) ‘Technology and Innovation: Interpreting a sketch of the Waterford glasshouse drawn by the architect C. R. Cockerell, 1823’ in J. Hearne (ed.) Glassmaking in Ireland: From the Medieval to the Contemporary, Irish Academic Press, pp. 169-83.
Articles
(2023) ‘Material Encounters: the Ireland Glass Biennale Exhibition 2023’ Glass Network Digital. Contemporary Glass Society UK. Available online: https://tinyurl.com/cfpd5dac
Moran, Anna (2021) Review of Exhibition: "Birds, Bugs, and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe's 'Peacock' Worcester Porcelain." at Dublin Castle, and accompanying publication, Birds, Bugs and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe’s ‘Peacock’ China. A Biography of an Irish service of Worcester Porcelain by Alec Cobbe, Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol 54, Number 3, Spring.
Moran, Anna (2020) ‘Developing Discourse in Contemporary Glass’ in F. Byrne (ed) Glass Ireland: The Annual Publication of the Glass Society of Ireland, pp. 27-29.
Moran, Anna (2020) ‘Glassmakers, glass retailers and glass consumers: New research on glass in Ireland, c. 1730 – c. 1830’, Glass Matters, issue no. 7, pp. 4-10.
Moran, Anna (2009) ‘Merchants and Material Culture in early nineteenth-century Dublin: a consumer case study’ in W. Laffan (ed.) Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies: The Journal of Irish Georgian Society XI, pp. 140-65.
Moran, Anna (2008) ‘Selling Irish glass to the English: an adventure with Waterford glass in early nineteenth-century England’, in R. Dodsworth (ed.) Journal of the Glass Association, Volume 8, pp. 14-19.
Moran, Anna (2004) ‘Selling Waterford glass in early nineteenth-century Ireland’ in N. Figgis (ed.) Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies VI: The Journal of the Irish Georgian Society, pp. 56-90.
Recent reviews
Moran, A. (2023) Review of Conor Lucey (ed.) House and Home in Georgian Ireland: Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life, Architectural History, 66, 12-13
Moran, A. (2021) Review of Exhibition: "Birds, Bugs, and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe's 'Peacock' Worcester Porcelain." at Dublin Castle, and accompanying publication, Birds, Bugs and Butterflies: Lady Betty Cobbe’s ‘Peacock’ China. A Biography of an Irish service of Worcester Porcelain by Alec Cobbe, Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol 54, Number 3, Spring.
Catalogues
Moran, Anna, ed. (2019) Ireland Glass Biennale, a catalogue to accompany the Ireland Glass Biennale 2019 exhibition, Dublin Castle.
Boards and Committees
2019 – present: Member of the Desmond Guinness Scholarship Committee, Irish Georgian Society.
2021: Member of the panel of judges formed to select fifty makers to showcase as part of the ‘Irish Craft Heroes: 50 Makers x 50 Years’ exhibition, organised to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Design & Craft Council of Ireland.
2020 – 2022: Board member of the Glass Society of Ireland.
2020 – 2022: Chair of the Editorial Board of Glass Ireland.
2018: Member of the judging panel for the Royal Dublin Society Craft Scholarship.
2017: Juror for the Ireland Glass Biennale Exhibition, NCAD.
2011 – present: Member of the Editorial Board of Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies: Journal of the Irish Georgian Society.
2008 – 2010: Member of the Editorial Board for Artefact: the journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians.
Peer reviewing
Anna has served as a Peer Reviewer for a number of publishers and publications relevant to her areas of expertise.
Consultancy
As a specialist on Irish glass, Anna has provided consultancy to the National Museum of Ireland, as well as a number of private collections.
Completed PhD supervision
Emma O’Toole ‘Objects, Spaces and Rituals: A Social and Material History of Maternity and Infancy in Ireland, ca. 1730 – ca. 1830’. (2011-2018) [Co-supervised with Associate Professor Catherine Cox, UCD] Funded by the Irish Research Council.
Liza Foley ‘From Hide to Hand: The Leather Glove as Material and Metaphor in Polite English Culture, ca. 1730 to 1820’ (2012-2018) [Co-supervised with Dr Macushla Baudis] Funded by the Irish Research Council.
