Maynooth University Department of History

Maynooth University is one of the principal centres of research into the history of Ireland. The department offers direction of research in every period of Irish history, including local history. The research specialisations of staff are as follows:

Dr Terence A Dooley
Specialises in Irish social and political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly the land question, the fortunes of great houses and estates, the work of the Irish Land Commission and the local politics of the revolutionary period. Has expertise also in policy matters concerning heritage and restoration.

Dr M Denise Dunne
Primary research interest is in the History of European integration focusing in particular on British policy on European integration. Other areas of research include the US-European transatlantic relationship in the context of European integration and the institutional development of the European Union from inception to date. Broad research and teaching interests encompass twentieth century European and American history.

Dr Colmán Etchingham
Pre-Norman Ireland from the fifth century to the twelfth, in particular the organisation of the church and its role in society, early Irish law, Irish kingship, the annals as a source, Vikings as raiders and settlers and Viking-Age relations between Ireland and Britain.

Dr Alison FitzGerald
The decorative arts and craft history; Irish design history and material culture, in particular, the history of goldsmiths, jewellers and allied traders; the production and consumption of luxury goods in the British Atlantic world during the eighteenth century; the history of collecting.

Professor Raymond Gillespie
Social and cultural change in early modern Ireland; the diffusion of print and the changing experience of reading in Ireland 1580–1700.

Professor Jacqueline R Hill
Research interests include eighteenth and nineteenth century Dublin, early modern political thought in Britain and Ireland, history of Irish guilds. Parallels/contrasts in Irish and Canadian history, especially in respect of religion and national identity, is an additional interest.

Dr David Lederer
Renaissance and Reformation; early modern Germany; history of psychiatry; gender studies.

Professor Marian Lyons
Irish migration to Europe and migrant experiences on the continent in the early modern period, with particular emphasis on France and specifically Jacobite migrants in Paris, c.1690–c.1730. Franco-Irish diplomatic and political relations in the sixteenth century. Ireland’s trading associations with France in the early modern era. Thomas Arthur, MD, of Limerick (1590–1675). The Kildare dynasty in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Ireland. Women in late medieval and early modern Ireland.

Dr Dympna McLoughlin
Irish social history; gender in nineteenth century Ireland; history of medicine. Research specialisms; gender and class nineteenth century Ireland; poverty and subsistence nineteenth century Ireland; emigration and the poor law; children, nineteenth century Ireland.

Dr JoAnne Mancini
History of the United States and its colonial antecedents; intersections of American and world history.

Dr Filipe Meneses
Lectures in Spanish and Portuguese twentieth century history, the First World War and the development of fascism, and Europe’s colonial empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His primary area of research is the Portuguese New State and its leader, António de Oliveira Salazar.

Dr Thomas O’Connor
Irish in Europe 1550–1800; Jansenism in 17th century; Roman Inquisition seventeenth century; political thought 1550–1700.

Dr Jacinta Prunty
Research and teaching interests encompass all aspects of urban, social and cartographic history, with a particular focus on the history of town mapping. She continues to work with the invaluable source materials produced by church charities and religious orders, and specialises in the study of their development from the early nineteenth century onwards.

Dr Ian Speller
Teaching and research interests include British foreign and defence policy in the twentieth century; military history and defence studies; naval history and maritime strategy; the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.