Born: 27 July 1945, Ireland
Died: 15 June 2017
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Angela Byrne. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Gilligan, Ann Louise (1945–2017), theologian, activist and educator, was born on 27 July 1945 into a ‘strongly middle class’ family in Nutley Park, Dublin 4 (Our lives out loud, 12), one of three children of publican Arthur Gilligan (d. 1974) and former Bank of Ireland employee Mary Imelda Gilligan (née Gately, d. 1980); her siblings were Arthur Gilligan and June Kelly. Gilligan knew from an early age that she wanted to be a teacher; as a child she gathered other children together in play to create make-believe classrooms. During what she recalled as a happy childhood she was educated at Loreto, Foxrock, and joined the Loreto order in Rathfarnham in 1962. Her mother’s religious devotion, passed on to her in childhood, remained with her for life.
Religious orders cut short; early teaching career
Having entered the religious order in the hope of being assigned to missions overseas, Gilligan was disappointed to learn that the order intended for her to remain in Ireland, and left religious life after three years and before making her final profession of vows. During her time with the Loreto order, Gilligan completed a degree in secondary teaching at the Mater Dei Institute of Education in Dublin. Shortly after leaving religious life she worked for three months as an au pair in Seville and lived in an Israeli kibbutz; as a secondary school student, she had spent three summers working as an au pair in France. Returning to Ireland, she taught catechetics and elocution at Mercy convent secondary school, New Ross, for a time in the early 1970s before winning a scholarship to undertake a two-year Masters (MA) at the Institut Catholique de Paris (1974–6). She experienced Paris in the aftermath of the 1968 student protests, a place where contraception, divorce and abortion had been legalised – a world away from a socially repressive Ireland still in the grip of catholic church influence over political and social life. Returning to Ireland with ideas influenced by the left-leaning theologians, philosophers and psychologists she met in Paris, she was appointed as a lecturer in education at St Patrick’s teacher training college in Drumcondra in 1976.
In 1981 Gilligan took a leave of absence from St Patrick’s College to enrol in a doctoral programme in theology and education at Boston College, Massachusetts, where she met fellow Ph.D. student, Seattle-born Katherine Zappone; they were the only two enrolled on their programme of study. Gilligan later recalled, ‘In meeting Katherine I was surprised by love … I was so overcome that I suddenly had met somebody that I could know without hesitation that I could spend the rest of my life with them’ (Late late show, 10 Mar. 2006). They promised to spend their lives together within six weeks of meeting, and exchanged vows in an episcopalian life partnership ceremony in Rockport, Massachusetts, in October 1982, in the presence of a small group of close friends. Returning to Ireland with Zappone in 1983, Gilligan resumed her role at St Patrick’s College; they both returned briefly to the USA in 1984 to complete their doctorates. In Ireland, both women became involved in activism, joining Irish Women for Disarmament; Gilligan also became vice-chair of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ women’s committee, representing the Irish Federation of University Teachers.
St Patrick’s College and community education activism
While the couple were generally discreet about their relationship, during the many years that Gilligan worked in St Patrick’s – which was administered by the catholic diocese of Dublin – she experienced professional difficulties as a result of her sexual orientation. In 1984 she successfully interviewed for the position of head of the department of religious studies, but the position was given to another candidate after Gilligan’s appointment was vetoed without explanation by Dermot Ryan (qv), archbishop of Dublin. Refusing to quietly accept this treatment, she declared herself ‘acting’ head of department. Eventually permitted to take up the position, albeit for a fixed period of four years (rather than the indefinite tenure which was then the norm for such positions), Gilligan claimed that successive archbishops refused to discuss the decision not to approve her appointment. Zappone later recalled that they had to lead a double life: ‘Our friends knew about our relationship, but we couldn’t be truly open about who we were … especially because of the nature of our jobs in theology and education’ (Irish Examiner, 10 Oct. 2015). Among the many roles Gilligan had during her long employment at St Patrick’s was as founder and director of the college’s Educational Disadvantage Centre, working on preventing early school-leaving. She remained heavily involved in the field of access to education for the rest of her life. She was a member of the statutory committee on educational disadvantage, chair of the National Educational Welfare Board from 2001 and, in 2012, was appointed to the board of Quality and Qualifications Ireland.
Gilligan and Zappone were both deeply influenced by catholic teaching on social justice as encapsulated in the tradition of the social encyclical, emphasising in their work the realisation of human rights through respectful partnership with deprived communities. In 1986 Gilligan and Zappone established The Shanty educational hub at the home they had purchased a year previously in Brittas, Co. Wicklow, offering an adult community education programme to women from West Tallaght, then a recently established outer suburb with high rates of unemployment and practically no public services. The programme, managed in collaboration with local women and Dominican nuns, was grounded in the principles of feminist Christian spirituality that Gilligan was bound to throughout her life; she developed a five-step feminist imaginative pedagogy through teaching at The Shanty. Participants were supported with bus transportation to and from The Shanty (10km away) and childcare provision in a local community centre; the earliest courses offered training in communication, negotiations and advocacy. In 1989 classes moved from Gilligan and Zappone’s house to their garage, known as The Muse and converted by a volunteer building team using donated materials. By 1996 the initiative expanded to a dedicated premises at An Cosán, Tallaght (on a site given by South Dublin county council and funded by a hard-won government grant) comprising Shanty Education and Training Centre for adult education, Rainbow House for early childhood education and care, and Fledglings social enterprise centre. Zappone later described An Cosán as ‘Ann Louise’s dream … an educational catalyst for change’ (Echo, 22 June 2017). Other practical results of advocacy arising from The Shanty included a successful campaign to establish a Credit Union in the community.
Gilligan’s work as an educator and theologian was influenced by feminist Christian philosophers such as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Julia Kristeva. Gilligan and Zappone revealed in their joint biography (Our lives out loud: in pursuit of justice and equality, 2008) that the centrality of spiritualism to their community activism often made them feel isolated from feminists who were critical of their attachment to religion in the context of the revelations of the scale of abuse by members of the catholic church in the 1990s. Undaunted, both Gilligan and Zappone embraced roles as public feminist theologians and teachers through media appearances, public lectures and teaching women’s groups nationwide. Together with a group of other feminist theologians they founded Womanspirit: the Irish Journal of Feminist Spirituality, published from 1986 to 1994.
Marriage equality
Gilligan and Zappone married in Vancouver, Canada, on 13 September 2003 in what was under Canadian law a legally binding wedding ceremony (they appeared in the 2009 Dublin Pride parade wearing their wedding dresses). In July 2004, in response to a request they submitted that April, they were informed by the Revenue Commissioners that they could not be treated as a married couple for taxation purposes. This followed the enactment of the Civil Registration Act in February 2004, which stated for the first time in Irish law that marriage was confined to heterosexual couples. In November 2004 Gilligan and Zappone were granted leave by the high court to pursue a case against the Revenue Commissioners; when granting leave, Justice Liam McKechnie said the case would be ‘of profound importance for same-sex couples and society as a whole’ (Irish Independent, 10 Nov. 2004). When news of the case broke, it was reported in sixty-seven countries and a support group, KAL (‘Katherine and Ann Louise’), was established. On 14 December 2006 Judge Elizabeth Dunne ruled in Zappone and Gilligan v Revenue Commissioners (2006) that under the Irish constitution, marriage could only be between heterosexual couples, Gilligan and Zappone’s Canadian-registered marriage could not be recognised and they could not legally marry in Ireland. Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1 later that day, Gilligan said, ‘This judicial decision … means we are not equal in this country in one of the most critical aspects of our lives’ (Gilligan & Zappone, 270).
The case sparked a public debate in Ireland about marriage equality, led to public protests calling on the government to legislate for same-sex marriage, prompted a concerted activist effort with the support of political and civil society organisations, and brought the question of marriage equality into the mainstream. In 2007 the couple appealed to the supreme court, challenging the constitutionality of the Civil Registration Act; the supreme court returned the case to the high court in 2012. Gilligan and Zappone held fundraising dinners in their home and became ‘poster girls’ for marriage equality, speaking to ‘middle Ireland’ as Christians who had led exemplary lives. Their long battle gave added impetus to ongoing campaigns for civil unions and marriage equality that led to the Civil Partnership Act (2010), which set out broadly similar rights and obligations of civil partners towards each other, and treated civil partners the same as married partners for tax and social welfare purposes, but fell short of the full equality that Gilligan and Zappone (and others) were seeking. At a constitutional convention held on the question of marriage equality in April 2013 (Zappone, then a senator and one of three openly LGBTQI+ members of the oireachtas, was among its delegates), four-fifths of the 100 delegates voted to ask for constitutional change to allow for same-sex marriage and to change laws around parenting and guardianship to give equality before the law to children in LGBTQI+-headed households. The leaders of Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), Marriage Equality and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties quickly formed a campaign to ensure that the government upheld its commitment to a referendum on marriage equality; Yes Equality, the umbrella group for the pro-amendment campaign, was officially launched in March 2015. Gilligan and Zappone – both Marriage Equality board members – spoke at Yes Equality meetings and canvasser training days, and made prominent media appearances during the referendum campaign. In 2014, prior to the government announcement that a referendum on marriage equality would be held in 2015, Gilligan told journalist Una Mullally: ‘The political is personal and the legal is personal: there are lives that are being profoundly impacted, negatively, every day … this is not a light or personal issue … as a societal issue of rights and responsibilities, it is a major issue and every day is a day too long to wait’ (Mullally, 284–5). When the referendum passed in May 2015, Gilligan and Zappone gathered in the courtyard of Dublin Castle with hundreds of other activists, politicians and supporters, and Gilligan accepted Zappone’s marriage proposal live on television. The Marriage Act (2015) came into effect in November 2015 and Gilligan and Zappone were married under Irish law, after over a decade of campaigning, in Dublin’s city hall on 22 January 2016. Their wedding dresses – Gilligan’s red, and Zappone’s black – have since been presented to the National Museum of Ireland.
Later life and death
Alongside her activist and community education commitments, Gilligan remained engaged in academic and intellectual life. She published policy papers and academic articles on the philosophy of the imagination, philosophies of difference, educational equality, and feminist policy-making. Her book, Reclaiming the secret of love: feminism, imagination and sexual difference – based on her doctoral thesis and posthumously published in 2021 – articulated her philosophical approach to adult education as grounded in love and respect for the student.
Following the exertions of lengthy court battles, public attention and activism, Gilligan was described as living in her later years ‘a charmed life’ with Zappone in their home in the tranquillity of the Dublin mountains, focusing on their passion project, An Cosán (Irish Examiner, 10 Oct. 2015). A long-time vegetarian who kept hens and grew her own vegetables, Gilligan enjoyed travel, cooking, golf, horse-riding, wine and jazz; she was forced by ill health to give up her much-loved bright red BMW motorbike in 2013. Ann Louise Gilligan died in St James’s Hospital, Dublin, on 15 June 2017. Her wake, attended by large crowds, was held at An Cosán on 16 June 2017, and a humanist funeral service was held in The Helix, Dublin City University (DCU), on 17 June. She is buried in Manor Kilbride cemetery, Co. Wicklow. An articulate speaker, Gilligan had a gift for communicating complex ideas in accessible language. In her eulogy, Zappone described Gilligan as a fearless ‘champion of equality, fairness and justice’ (Irish Times, 15 June 2017). She is remembered as ‘the spark that lit the marriage equality movement’ (Irish Times, 19 June 2017). DCU named a lecture theatre in her honour in December 2018. Katherine Zappone donated the Gilligan and Zappone papers, including materials relating to their advocacy and personal and professional lives, to the National Library of Ireland in December 2025.