Helena Byrne on Women's Football in Ireland
Women's soccer in Ireland in this week's podcast brought to you by the British Society of Sport History in association with the Institute of Historical Research with Helena Byrne, who is Curator of the Digital Archive at the British Library. Helena's paper discussed the development of Women's soccer in Ireland from the late nineteenth century, and in particular highlighted the boom in indoor soccer in the 1960s. Her work is part of an ongoing project that seeks to recover the history of the sport, a matter of some urgency now that the 60s generation is succumbing to old age. She also discusses the conference on 'Sidelines, touchlines and hemlines: Women in Irish Sport' that will take place in Dundlak on 28th February 2020. With her web archivist's hat on Helena also talked about the incredible range of digital resources that she and her colleagues have been working on that will be invaluable to historians of the 21st century both now and into the future. Helena Byrne is the Curator of Web Archives at the British Library. She was the Lead Curator on the IIPC CDG 2018 and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic collections. Helena completed her Master in Library and Information Studies at UCD in 2015. Previously she worked as an English language teacher in Turkey, South Korea and Ireland.