The Great Irish Famine, 1845–1852 is a university-oriented digital humanities resource exploring how an ecological shock became a prolonged human catastrophe through the interaction of potato blight, landholding, poverty, markets, government policy, relief, disease, displacement and migration.The resource combines a documentary with a connected collection of student and university inquiry materials. The documentary provides the central narrative, covering Ireland before 1845, the potato failures of 1845 and 1846, changing government and relief responses, the Poor Law, disease and displacement, regional differences, demographic change and migration across the Atlantic world. It also introduces differing historical interpretations and the continuing question of responsibility.Supporting materials include a Student Companion; Transcript, Sources & Credits; a Famine Evidence Explorer provided as a Final Public Student Edition and Student Guide; and focused inquiry resources on Faith, Relief & Community, From Famine to Identity, and Beyond the Written Record.The collection is designed to support source analysis, evidence comparison, historical investigation and interpretation. Students encounter census and government records, Poor Law and relief records, trade and migration evidence, contemporary representations, maps, archaeology, bioanthropology and later scholarship.A central methodological emphasis is distinguishing direct evidence, scholarly interpretation, student inference and historical uncertainty. The resources can support university lectures, seminars, source-analysis activities, research assignments and independent study across Irish history, nineteenth-century history, migration and diaspora studies, social and economic history, archaeology, historical geography and digital humanities.All resources are freely available online. The documentary is hosted on YouTube and the supporting materials are provided through WeaversNest Academic Resources.
