I am a Dubliner, born and raised in Perrystown, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. At Trinity I was fortunate to study under Ciaran Brady, Helga Robinson-Hammerstein, Aidan Clarke and LM Cullen, outstanding early modernists whose lectures drew me into the period and left me wanting to know more; while from James Lydon and Ian Robinson I developed an abiding interest in the medieval period. On my arrival at UCC in 1993 I was able to merge the two areas, partly to plug a gap in the department's teaching, but also to pursue my research interests, which by then had begun to explore continuities between late medieval and early modern Ireland in order to better identify and measure some of the main political and social, religious and cultural changes that occurred during the 1500s and early 1600s.

Manuscript Studies/Irish Manuscripts Commission: One of the biggest problems affecting the proper study of Irish history circa 1450-1640 has been the shortfall in available documentary sources from all parts of the country because of the destruction wrought by the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, worse still, by the blowing up of the old Public Record Office in Dublin in 1922. Together with my friend Brian Donovan I attempted to help rectify this situation by conducting a search for surviving Irish historical documents in local and regional archive centres in Great Britain; our search took seven years, running in tandem with our PhD theses. Eventually it bore fruit as a monograph published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 1998, British Sources for Irish History, 1485-1641: A Guide to manuscripts in local, regional and specialised repositories in England, Scotland and Wales. (There is also a handlist of earlier material published in Analecta Hibernica no. 37 (1998)). While never compensating for all that has

Power, politics and society in Ireland, 1350-1650; Religion and sectarianism in the Age of Reformations; Migration in Irish and British history, c1500-1640. I have researched and published on a range of topics dealing with Irish history between 1350 and 1650 (see Publications). My principal area of research inquiry is power and society in Ireland, from the Gaelic resurgence of the fourteenth century to the Wars of Religion in the seventeenth century. My work falls into four related areas: (i) The cultural and political world of the native and colonial lordships; (ii) The violence of English government expansion after 1534 and the Irish response; (iii) Religion and colonialism in Ireland, c.1547-1641; (iv) The searching out and publication of manuscript sources for the history of later medieval and early modern Ireland.  

I teach a range of general and specialised courses for undergraduates, covering various aspects of Irish, British, and European history from the Black Death through the Renaissance to the mid-seventeenth century. Three of my main courses are listed below. It In addition I teach a third year double-unit seminar (Hi3200), 'Murder and Intrigue in Sixteenth Century Ireland, which is designed to introduce the students to the world of historical research and the use of primary evidence. Required to research and write-up an 8,000-word essay on a research topic of their choosing, this current year I am encouraging students to explore the murky world of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, using some of the new archival material I have discovered through my Irish Research Coyuncil -funded projects 'The Colonial Landscapes of Richard Boyle' and 'Duigital Boyle'.