Constantia Maxwell

Constantia Elizabeth Maxwell (1886–1962) was an Irish historian who became the first woman to join Trinity College Dublin as a Professor.

Her sister Euphan became the first woman ophthalmic surgeon in Ireland, succeeding her father at the Eye and Ear Hospital.

[1][2] She spent a year at Bedford College, London making valuable academic contacts, before returning to Trinity.

[4] Trinity College instituted a scholarship named after Professor Maxwell for Masters students in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

They later attracted criticism from Irish nationalists, who accused her of favouring the ruling elite and ignoring the native Catholic populace.

An obituary in Trinity described her as 'a deeply learned and cultivated woman of much sympathy and understanding, and much modesty and even humility for all her accomplishment and knowledge[;] her shrewd judgments on her subject and on her university [were] tinged always, it seemed, by an amused and ironic detachment which extended itself to all human affairs.