After a distinguished undergraduate and postgraduate career that saw him pass through the Universities of Maryland, Michigan State, and New York, David Lederer joined the History Department 30 years ago in 1995.
As a teacher, David was particularly innovative and his modules were a highlight for many students. As a scholar, he is highly regarded in Ireland and abroad, as is evidenced by the many competitive research awards, prizes, and other distinctions awarded to him. David was a Visiting Lecturer at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, in Munich, the Catholic University of America, in Washington DC, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was also a Fellow at the Shelby Cullom Davis Centre for Historical Studies, at the University of Princeton and at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2007 he was awarded the Gerald Strauss Prize of the Sixteenth Century Society, Best Book in Reformation History: Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon published by Cambridge University Press. David was the recipient of an Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences award and more recently (2015-17), he was based at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of the Emotions (Adelaide University) and at the Centre for the History of the Emotions (Queen Mary University London). In 2023, having served as Head of Department, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Bavarian History in Munich.
The editor of German History in Global and Transnational Perspective (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2017), he has also published some thirty-five articles and chapters across fields that include the history of witchcraft, psychiatry, suicide, and the emotions.
We wish David many happy years of good health and happiness in his retirement.