In the sixth episode of the Mundus series, Estudos Medievais welcomes Cormac Ó Gráda, professor emeritus of University College Dublin, to talk about his speciality: famines throughout history. Throughout the episode, Prof Ó Gráda talks about how we can define and quantify the famines of the past, what people died of during these periods, their demographic and social impact, as well as some of the main explanations for their occurrence.

Participants

⁠Cormac Ó Gráda⁠

José Francisco Sanches Fonseca

Staff members

Carolina⁠ Santos (edition)

Cecília Silva (edition)

Diego Pereira (writer)⁠⁠

Eric Cyon (edition)

⁠⁠Gabriel Cordeiro (illustrator)

⁠⁠Isabela Silva (writer)⁠

⁠José Fonseca (writer)⁠⁠

Marina Sanchez (writer)

⁠⁠Rafael Bosch (writer)

⁠⁠Sara Oderdenge (writer)

Bibliographic recommendations

DYSON, Tim; Ó GRÁDA, Cormac (Org.). Famine Demography: Perspectives from the Past and Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

MOKYR, Joel; Ó GRÁDA, Cormac. What do people die of during famines? The Great Irish Famine in comparative perspective. European Review of Economic History, Vol. 6, Nº 3. p. 339-364, 2002.

NEWBY, Andrew. Finland’s Great Famine, 1856-68. Londres: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Ó GRÁDA, Cormac. Eating people is wrong, and other essays on famine, its past, and its future. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Ó GRÁDA, Cormac. Famine: a short history. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.