Elizabeth Stack, PhD will deliver an overview of the Great Hunger as a complement to the new exhibition of select pieces from the Ireland's Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield Collection.

She will discuss conditions leading up to the failure of the potato and why that had such devastating consequences for some of the population of Ireland. She will examine the response of the British government and the landlords, as well as testimonies from eye-witnesses. American charity in Ireland and the mass migration that followed will also be covered. 

This is the first in a series of lectures which will examine different aspects of the Great Hunger in Ireland and America.

Elizabeth is the executive director of the American Irish Historical Society and her research interests include nineteenth and twentieth century Irish immigration to the US, as well as charitable and fraternal societies in America.