History woman with her finger on the pulse of time

The historical research I do would involve a lot of work for museums, creating displays, or designing CD-ROMs - providing the pictures and the content. I've been involved in several exhibitions and smaller publications for schools and for the general tourist market and D·chas.

When I look at a topic, I might not know a whole lot about it. If so, I'd source an expert to help me and, between the two of us, we look up the subject in the relevant books and try to bring topics that can be academic to a level where any member of the general public will find them accessible.

For picture research, I could be working with the designer who's making up the book and they might say: "I want to have an example on this page of something that represents health in Ireland today." I then go out to the picture libraries - there would be a number of them in Britain that would have stock photographs, or I would go to secondary sources, such as the local library, and find books with relevant pictures. I would also go to photographers or photographic agencies.

You also have to clear copyright, which means contacting the owner of a source. If it is an old painting, it would generally be the descendant of the artist.

I have my own business, Re:Search. I work from home a lot, and e-mail, the telephone and the fax would all be the tools which enable me to work from home. I have a large library of history books, so for some things I can just go over to my own shelf and pick out the relevant source.

At the moment, I hold meetings once a week because I'm working on the Encyclopaedia of Ireland. I work with the picture editor, Carla Briggs, which means I can share the workload and take the odd day off. The work involves selecting images that represent Ireland - contemporary images, as well as images from the past.

When we looked at the north of Ireland, we found that many of the images were very violent, so you have to avoid dumbing down the situation while illustrating it in an appropriate way. You trade a lot on your name working as a freelance, so you're only as good as the last job you did.

I was recently appointed to the board of Kilmainham Jail and I've just finished working on an exhibition for the gaol on the lives of children convicts. My first port of call was the bookshops, to find out if somebody has written on the subject before and I discovered that, in the Irish context, no one had. The exhibition is aimed at primary school children, so part of my job is to impart my love of history to them.

I worked with the museum designers, giving them information which would stimulate them to produce the artwork. We worked very much in tandem, sharing ideas with each other.

A lot of the work involves finding descendants. One day you'd get a note through the post which would give you somebody's death certificate. This would give you the date and place where they died and tell you what age they were. All of a sudden, you can trace back and find the date they were born.

All the time, you're getting clues. It becomes like an obsession. One link leads to another, so you're like a detective without the blood and gore.

If I left this job tomorrow, the biggest loss would be the huge network of contacts and source materials I have. My lifestyle is about changes, no day is the same. I've gone to visit people in castles, I've had lecture tours in America, based on the research I've done, and I've had opportunities to meet the descendants of famous people.

I adore history, I love my job - really I get paid for something that would be my hobby anyway.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly