Geary and Stark find that Ireland's post‐Famine per capita GDP converged with British levels, and that this convergence was largely due to total factor productivity growth rather than mass emigration. In this article, new long‐run measurements of human capital accumulation in Ireland are devised in order to facilitate a better assessment of sources of this productivity growth, including the relative contribution of men and women. This is done by exploiting the frequency at which age data heap at round ages, widely interpreted as an indicator of a population's basic numeracy skills. Because Földvári, van Leeuwen, and van Leeuwen‐Li find that gender‐specific trends in this measure derived from census returns are biased by who is reporting and recording the age information, any computed numeracy trends are corrected using data from prison and workhouse registers, sources in which women ostensibly self‐reported their age. The findings show that rural Irish women born early in the nineteenth century had substantially lower levels of human capital than uncorrected census data would otherwise suggest. These results are large in magnitude and thus economically significant. The speed at which women converged is consistent with Geary and Stark's interpretation of Irish economic history; Ireland probably graduated to Europe's club of advanced economies thanks in part to rapid advances in female human capital.

The role of wall murals — as both territorial markers and as a means of maintaining and reinforcing identity — has been a frequent subject of study as a way of understanding the recent conflict in Northern Ireland, euphemistically known as ‘the Troubles’ (c. 1969—c. 1998). Whilst the heightened political and social relevance of murals and graffiti during civil conflict is undoubtedly a worthy subject of study, the role of their physical context — walls — has not been so thoroughly analysed and deconstructed. In the context of Northern Ireland, walls have had multiple uses and meanings — they can be not only blank canvases to facilitate communication but also physical barriers that solidify social relations and prevent interaction. This article examines the dual role of walls both during and in the aftermath of conflict as a means of highlighting their positive and negative attributes and de-essentializing their existence. It is suggested that there is a need to contextualize and consider the current and potential role of walls in the maintenance of peace and facilitating a ‘new’ Northern Ireland.

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