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For many of us, including members of the medical professions, COVID-19 challenged and sometimes altered our understandings of epidemic disease. Some of these were hotly contested; it is not always easy to change entrenched views grounded in years of research and ‘accepted’ scientific knowledge, even in the face of new evidence. This fundamental change in what we know about epidemic disease, in the middle of a crisis, can be applied in other key points in disease history – including both the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, and the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s.

Ida Milne, Ph.D., will explore how crisis provoked change in the context of these pandemics. Dr. Milne is a visiting research scholar at the University of Notre Dame Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies for the 2026-27 academic year and a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s department of history.