David Murphy

Dr Murphy is a graduate of University College, Dublin (BA, MLitt) and Trinity College, Dublin (PhD). He has taught at both of these institutions, teaching electives on European and Irish history as well as military history and the history of polar exploration. Between 1997 and 2005 he was a major contributor to the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography, writing almost 400 biographical entries. During this period working for the Royal Irish Academy, he was also seconded to the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

In 2004 he became the first Irish scholar to be awarded a fellowship to the West Point Summer Seminar in Military History. Since 2008, he has acted as a reader for academic publishers, including Four Courts Press, Palgrave-MacMillan, Yale UK and Liverpool University Press. In 2023, he was an invited panellist on the National Consultative Forum on International Security Policy. He was nominated for a MU teaching award in 2022 and 2023. Dr Murphy was awarded an Irish Research Council Research Ally Prize in 2023.

Current PhD supervision:

James Deery, Ireland and the Napoleonic Wars (with special reference to Irish soldiers serving in British and Scottish regiments during the period 1808 -1815.)

Jennifer Brady, The four Irishmen among the ‘Seven Men of Moidart’: an investigation of their role in Jacobite politics and intrigue c.1710-c.1760.

Arthur Cagney, British perspectives of, involvement in, and impact on, the Irish Civil War, 1922-23.

Recent Publications

‘Sung enough in Upper Canada among tribes and nations of Indians: Lt-Col. Jasper Grant and his military service on the Canadian frontier, 1800-09’ in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (forthcoming, 2024)

‘Irish regiments and soldiers in the Crimean War; their contribution and legacy’ in British Journal for Military History, vol. 9, no. 2 (2023). 

With Dr Paddy Bury, ‘No time to hide: the future of Irish defence and security’ in War on the Rocks, March 2023. Available online at: No Time to Hide: The Future of Irish Defense and Security - War on the Rocks

Dr Murphy is a regular contributor to RTE Brainstorm. See: David Murphy(rte.ie)

 Recent Conference Papers: 

‘Military archives in the context of Irish country houses’ at Caring for Collections in Historic Houses in Ireland, Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses & Estates, Maynooth University, November 2023 

‘T.E. Lawrence: Prophet of Guerrilla Warfare?’ for the National US World War 1 Museum, November 2023 (online)

‘Martial imagery: representations of the military and the Great House’, 21^stAnnual Historic Houses Conference, Maynooth University, May, 2023.

‘The next war: perceptions of future war in the pre-WW1 era’, Future of Warfare Conference, Netherlands Centre for Strategic Studies, Amsterdam, October 2023.

See his personal website at http://www.davidmurphymilitaryhistory.com/