Teaching
In Prelims (First Year) I teach: Approaches to History, Historiography, General History IV (1815-1914), British History VI (1815-1924), British History VII (1914 – ), Optional Subject: Theories of the State (Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx) and Optional Subject: The Rise and Fall of European Socialisms.
In FHS (Final Honours School, Second and Third Year) I teach: Disciplines of History, General History XII 1856-1914, General History XIII 1914-1944, General History XIV 1944-1973, British History VI (1815-1924), British History VII (1914 – ), Further Subject: Nationalism, Politics and Culture in Ireland, c. 1870-1921 and Special Subject: The Northern Ireland Troubles, 1965-1985.
About me
The son of a forester and a primary school teacher, I was born in Ireland. I took my degrees up to PhD at the Queen’s University of Belfast.
Recent work includes:
Bourgeois Liberty and the politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism (Oxford, 2012)
‘Inventing the Working Class’ [Review Essay on Marx], Dublin Review of Books, August 2013
Terence O’Neill: Life and Times (Dublin, 2013)
Research
About half the time, I work on Irish History in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Otherwise I’m researching the history of political thought since the French Revolution. Currently I have two projects underway: Irish peasant activism in the 1880s, and leftist attitudes internationally to the proletarian working-class.
Graduate teaching
I have supervised graduate students at Masters and PhD level on nineteenth and twentieth Irish History and leftist political thought, and would welcome prospective students in these areas.