Genealogist · Author · Historian
Joanna Cicely Fennell M.A.G.I. is a multi-lingual accredited Irish genealogist with a passion for travel and photography. Her personal research interests include British India, South Africa and the Caribbean. Joanna has been a full-time professional genealogist since 2012, having discovered a talent for genealogy three years earlier when, inspired by family lore, she began to document her own family history. By exploring her family’s dramatic past, which crossed continents, social divides and religions, Joanna uncovered connections to Florence Nightingale, Clive of India and King Charles III, to name just a few of the famous individuals on her family tree.
Joanna has since conducted research for hundreds of clients with ancestors from all parts of the globe, in a variety of languages. As well as client and probate research, she has extensive experience researching for television shows such as Who Do You Think You Are? and My Family Secrets Revealed. After several years as a freelance genealogist, Joanna spent four years working for AncestryProGenealogists in Dublin, where she expanded her research skills to include DNA analysis, which she has used to great effect in solving adoption and unknown parentage cases in Ireland and abroad over the years.
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Bachelor of Arts, English and Italian (University College Dublin, 2004)
Master of Arts, Film Studies (University College Dublin, 2007)
Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogical Studies (University of Strathclyde, 2011)
Member of Accredited Genealogists Ireland (2015)
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Adoption, British India, Caribbean, DNA, Genetic Genealogy, Gentry, Irish Abroad, Irish Citizenship, Italian Citizenship, Quakers, Merchants, Military, Nobility, Probate Genealogy, Unknown Parentage
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Italian, French, German
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Joanna has written articles for the Families in British India Society, Irish Genealogical Research Society, Ancestry and Accredited Genealogists Ireland. In 2013, she completed her first privately-commissioned book The Pitman Family (154pp), available in selected libraries worldwide. She has presented on a variety of topics at family history events, such as ‘Back To Our Past’ in Dublin and ‘Who Do You Think You Are? Live’ in London.
Articles include:
Tracing the Irish Abroad: Miscellaneous Foreign Records
Tracing the Irish Abroad: Consular Records
Researching Quakers: Disownment
The Irish in the East India Company
Bespoke genealogical research from €950
Beyond the records
“[Joanna] sent me photos of places that his parents had lived, copies of records and really obscure, difficult to find things like a copy of a crossword competition, which my grandmother had won! It put a human spin on the research and I found the whole experience really interesting.”
