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CORVALLIS - Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, the granddaughter of famous Irish women's rights advocate and suffragette Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, will recount her grandmother's role in early 20th-century Irish politics and history in a lecture at Oregon State University.

Her talk, "The Role of Sheehy Skeffingtons in Early 20th-Century Irish Feminism, Republican and Pacifist Activities," will begin at 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 15, at the OSU Center for the Humanities (811 S.W. Jefferson St. in Corvallis). It is free and open to the public.

Hanna Sheehy Skeffington played a major role in Irish history. Her imprisonment and hunger strike led to Irish women getting the vote in 1918, two years before American women won voting rights.

Her husband, also a suffragist and nationalist, was murdered during the Easter Uprising of 1916, forcing Hanna to escape to America with her young son while using a false passport. Eager to communicate the Irish crisis to U.S. citizens, she gave her first talk on American soil in 1917 to a packed house at Carnegie Hall. During the next 18 months, she toured 21 states, giving 250 speeches.

Granddaughter Micheline Sheehy Skeffington has received a $30,000 grant to begin converting her grandmother's home in Dublin into a residential and education center for women. Known as "Hanna's House," it will promote women's equality through research and education.

She is touring 16 U.S. cities, partly reprising her grandmother's route in America and speaking about her activities. She also is raising support for Hanna's House.

The Corvallis lecture is sponsored by the OSU Center for the Humanities, the Department of Speech Communication, the University Theatre Program, the Department of History, and the Women's Studies Program.