Life Histories and Social Change is a large collection of qualitative life story interviews with three cohorts of Irish citizens, each of which reached adulthood in the crucial decades of the 1950s (an era of socio-economic decline), the 1970s (an era of initial 'modernisation') and in the 1990s (the 'Celtic Tiger' boom). The research was funded by the Irish Research Council and a total of 113 life history interviews were conducted by researchers from Maynooth University between 2006 and 2008. Of this number, 100 have been made available for re-use through the Irish Qualitative Data Archive as full-interview transcripts and as short, topic-focused audio clips.

The collection has been sub-divided into three cohort folders below, plus a forth folder containing publicly available data.

Participants in the study were drawn from three birth cohorts: those born between 1916 - 1934; between 1945 - 1954, and between 1965 - 1974. One interviewee was born in 1914 but the transcript was not included in the archived collection. Interviewees had participated in all eight waves of the 'Living in Ireland Survey' that formed part of the European Community Household Panel study, conducted in each year from 1994 - 2001.

Access to the full Life Histories and Social Change collection is restricted to bona fide researchers and teachers, and to students who are currently registered at a third-level academic institution. However a small collection of audio clips are openly available (see the 'Life Histories and Social Change Open Data' folder). To request access to any of the restricted content use the Access Request option in the DRI or contact the IQDA directly.

Scroll through the boxes at the bottom of the page to view each sub-collection including the archive of Open Data from this collection.

Cover photograph: Dun Laoghaire Pier (1990) by Albert Bridge CC BY SA 2.0