The principal activities of the Society are the organising of conferences and the publication of works or collections of papers on Nineteenth-Century Ireland.

To date the Society has held the following conferences:

• Victorian Ireland Revisited (1992)
• The Famine (1994)
• Gender and Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1995)
• Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (1996)
• Regionalism and Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1997)
• 1798, 1848, 1898: Revolution, Revival, and Commemoration (1998)
• Ireland and the Union: Questions of Identity (1999)
• Ireland Abroad (2000)
• Nineteenth-Century Studies in the Twenty-First Century (Symposium, 2000)
• Victoria's Ireland (2001)
• The Irish Revival Reappraised (2002)
• Ireland and Europe in the Nineteenth Century (2003)
• Structures of Belief in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (2004)
• Derry Conference, Magee College (2006)
• Michael Davitt Centerary Conference, St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra (2006)

Volumes of proceedings from some of these conferences are already available. Others are in preparation.