Personal statement
My work focuses on the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and the themes of migration, political violence, nationalism and anarchism, mainly relating to Ireland and the Irish diapsora, and occasionally I write on Italy and the United States. At the moment I'm writing a book on emigrant activism and the Irish Land War of the late-nineteenth century which will appear in 2021. It is based on research supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship and explores radical networks in Ireland and Irish migrant communities in Britain, the United States and Argentina. My first book is The Dynamiters: Irish nationalism and political violence in the wider world, 1867-1900 (Cambridge UP, 2012, paperback 2015). Based on my PhD thesis from the European University Institute, Florence, the book offers a transnational history of Irish nationalist violence in the nineteenth century.
I teach the history of modern Ireland at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and I also run a year-long undergraduate module on the global history of terrorism.
Along with teaching and research, I’m interested in history and film and I organise the mini-film series Screening Irish History which has run at the Glasgow Film Theatre, the CCA Glasgow and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse.
At Strathclyde I am the History rep for the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, and I am the Erasmus and International Exchange co-ordinator for History.
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