Irish Women on the Move

Irish women on the Move: Migration and Mission in Spain, 1499-1700 is an original work, drawn from archival sources from across the Iberian peninsula. It examines the history of a dynamic and enterprising group of Irish women who migrated to Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, and throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in three distinct waves of migration. At the centre of this network of Irish women were a group of Dominican nuns who travelled from Galway to Bilbao in the Bizkaia region of Spain with the specific purpose of founding their order throughout Spain. They and their sponsors established schools and an academic curricula which facilitated assimilation into Spanish society whilst also marking them out as outstanding educators. They, along with Irish women spies and courtiers show how a dynamic and successful group of Irish women played a central part in the history of late medieval and early modern Spanish life.