'Love in the Lav' by Dr Averill Earls - Talk and Panel Discussion

Join us for the Irish launch of Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-1972 by Averill Earls. The launch will consist of a short talk by author Dr Averill Earls (St Olaf College, Minnesota), followed by a panel discussion with Dr Tom Hulme (Queens University Belfast) and Dr Páraic Kerrigan (University College Dublin). Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the night, online and at all good bookstores.

About the Book

Love in the Lav uncovers Ireland’s queer lives of the past. Averill Earls investigates how same-sex-desiring men lived and loved in a country where their sexuality was illegal and seen as unnatural. Across seven social biographical chapters, each highlighting individuals at the nexus of these histories, Earls constructs a narrative of experiences through the larger contexts in which they are embedded.

Earls uses courtroom testimonies, police records, and family history archives as well as “educated speculation” to show how structures governing male same-sex desire in Ireland played out on the bodies of the men who desired men, the teen boys who sold sex to men, and the way the Catholic-nationalist ethos shaped the Gardaí who policed them.

Love in the Lav examines the experiences of people such as cabbie James Hand, who was put on trial for gross indecency, to provide a window into the queer working-class subculture of 1930s Dublin. Earls also focuses on issues of consent, especially with teens, and the unregulated queer Irish world of public figures, including Micheál Mac Liammóir, Hilton Edwards, Ronald Brown, and John Broderick. By examining twentieth-century Ireland through the lived experiences of ordinary same-sex-desiring Irish men who were relegated to obscurity by Irish society, Earls reveals the contradictions, possibilities, and magnitude of postcolonial Irish Catholic nationalism.

About the Author

Dr. Averill Earls is a historian of sexuality and Ireland, and an award-winning baker. She’s co-founder and Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast, and an Associate Professor of History at St. Olaf College. Her writing has appeared on Notches Blog and Nursing Clio, as well as the Journal of the History of Sexuality and Historical Reflections. Her baking has appeared in the Minnesota State Fair, where she received a white ribbon for her Honey Gingersnap Cookies in 2024.

About the Panel Speakers

Dr. Páraic Kerrigan is an author, researcher and Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. He has published widely as an academic and critic in the area of queer Irish culture. He is the author of the Irish Times bestselling book Reeling in the Queers: Tales of Ireland's LGBTQ Past, which was also nominated for Best Irish Published Book at the 2024 An Post Book Awards. He is also the co-author with Maria Pramaggiore of the forthcoming book Waking the Hirschfeld: An Oral and Archival History of Dublin's Hirschfeld Centre, which is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press. His second non-fiction book will be released in 2026.

Dr. Tom Hulme is a history lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, where he has taught since 2016. He is the project lead of “Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation”, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and in April this year Cornell University Press will be publishing his book Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation.

Note on accessibility - This event will be ISL interpreted. The City Assembly House, 58 South William Street, is a wheelchair accessible venue.

Note on photography - This event will be recorded and made available on our YouTube channel (Dublin City Heritage) at a later date. Photographs may be taken.

Image credit - Garda Photography Division photo of a lavatory from above with a man inside. Photo taken to illustrate the Garda’s view inside the lavatory from his perch above. State Files, Dublin Circuit Court, 1D-44-30. Reproduced by kind permission of the Director of the National Archives.

With thanks to the staff of the Irish Georgian Society for facilitating this event.