My teaching closely follows my research interests. At undergraduate level I teach Sophister [level 3 and 4] modules on sixteenth-century cultural history, The Elizabethans and their World and History-writing in nineteenth century Britain and Ireland. At Freshman level I participate in two modules on early modern Irish history, two modules on American history, and a module on early modern British history. At postgraduate level I participate in the History Departments M.Phil programmes in Early Modern History and Modern Irish History and I co-ordinate the module Contesting Histories, shared also with the M.Phil in Public History. I am happy to offer supervision for research degrees on topics related sixteenth-century Ireland and England and on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and Irish history-writing.

My research interests have developed along two different but for me closely related lines. First, as an early modernist by training, I continue to research and write on Irish and English history in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Within this field I have a particular interest in the relations between the Gaelic Irish lordships and the English government and in the way the latter sought to engage with the former in terms both of practical policy and theoretical understanding. I am currently at work on the preparation of a Calendar of State Papers for the years 1556-65. My awareness of the unresolved interpretative conflicts which surround early modern Irish history and Anglo-Irish relations stimulated my second research interest in the theory and practice of history writing. I have published several articles and edited a number of books in this area and I have recently completed a study of the Victorian man-of letters and historian of the sixteenth century, James Anthony Froude.