About the Project

Dublin is a city shaped by centuries of inequality, migration, empire, class, and gender yet many of those histories remain hidden in plain sight, overlooked by conventional heritage narratives and tourist trails. Uncomfortable Dublin is a collaborative research project between local communities and researchers at Trinity College Dublin that aims to change that.

Uncomfortable Dublin uses participatory methods to treat community members not as research subjects, but as co-creators. Through workshops, guided walks, mapping activities, and shared conversations, participants help shape which stories are told and how they are told. Walking is used not just as a way to move through the city, but as a way to think together about place, memory, and power, and connecting historical events to the challenges and experiences of urban life today.

Working together, we are creating a new kind of Dublin walking tour, one that puts underrepresented voices and experiences at the centre. Our first tour traces a route from St Stephen’s Green through Ringsend and into the Docklands, exploring what these places have meant (and continue to mean) to the people who have lived and worked there.

Revisiting Dublin’s history.

Uncovering hidden figures.

The project will conclude with a public pilot walking tour of Dublin in September 2026. It is led by researchers at Trinity College Dublin and carried out in partnership with communities across the south and east inner city. Uncomfortable Dublin builds upon the Uncomfortable Oxford model and is developed in partnership with the Uncomfortable Oxford team.

We want to hear from people who live, work, or have connections to the areas along our route from St Stephen’s Green through Ringsend and the Docklands to the North East Inner City.

Participation is entirely voluntary, and you can take part in as much or as little as suits you. Some people might want to join a single workshop; others might want to be involved from the beginning, helping us map the area, shape the stories we tell, and walk the route as it develops. There are no special skills or prior knowledge required, just an interest in Dublin, its histories, and the communities that call it home.

Uncomfortable Tours / Oxford

Uncomfortable Tours is an academic-led Community Interest Company that researches, designs, and delivers tours as a form of innovative public engagement with research. Their goal is to spark thoughtful, critical conversations about difficult histories and their contemporary legacies.

Founded in 2018 in Oxford, their team specializes in intersectional pedagogical approaches, facilitating informed and inclusive discussions on historical memory, wealth inequality, race, gender, class discrimination, and the local and global legacies of European imperialism. Today, they operate in Oxford, Cambridge, and York, creating spaces for rigorous and accessible dialogic engagement.

This is a collaborative project between Trinity College Dublin and Uncomfortable Oxford.