A graduate of the University of Dublin, I was a Junior Research Fellow in the Institute of irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast, before being appointed a lecturer in the Dept. of Modern History. Elected a Fellow of TCD in 1990, I served as Head of the Department of Modern History from 1995 to 1998 and am currently Associate Professor of Modern History. I was University Registrar from 2004 to 2007, and a member of the Governing Body of the Dublin Institute of Technology during those years. I was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2006. I was a founding editor of the journal 'Irish Economic and Social History', and was President of the Economic and Social History Society of Ireland from 2002 to 2008. I was also a co-founder of the African Studies Association of Ireland. I acted as PI of the PRTLI-funded Irish Scottish Studies Programme (1999-2006) and am currently Director of the TCD Centre for Irish-Scottish and Comparative Studies. I was awarded a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship by the Irish Humanities and Social Science Research Council for 2002-3, and am now PI of the IRCHSS-funded 'Ireland, Empire and Education' Project 2008-10. I have published extensively on the social, economic and cultural history of Ireland in the long eighteenth century. Past collaborative research projects have included the demographic history of eighteenth-century Ireland; the comparative history of famine in Ireland; and the social history of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Dublin.

GENERAL INTERESTS: Social and economic history of Ireland 1650-1850; Irish urban history, especially of Dublin and Cork; Ireland and Africa since 1870; History of higher education in Ireland. CURRENT RESEARCH: Munster and the 1798 rebellion; Famine and public health 1799-1820; The professional diaspora from Ireland 1790-1940.