Reading Republican Murals in Northern Ireland: Archiving and Meaning-Making

Abstract

In this paper I will use my experience in compiling an online archive of the murals of Northern Ireland 1979-2021 to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of work in the digital humanities. I will argue that such a collection of visual materials from the war and post-war periods in Northern Ireland affords us the opportunity to assess major shifts in stance, policy and practice amongst unionists and loyalists, and nationalists and republicans. But I will also contend that although the archive itself can provide us with a rich set of materials, it cannot in and of itself give us their meaning. That task, I will conclude, depends on a set of traditional skills that long pre-date the digital order of things.