PHD 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:

Prof Raul Cârstocea
Research interests focus on antisemitism, nationalism, fascism, and more broadly on state formation and nation-building processes in nineteenth and twentieth-century Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe and their consequences for minority groups.

Prof Dejan Djokic
Research spans across, and brings together, three main strands: the Yugoslav war; global and cultural history of the Cold War; and history of Southeastern Europe since the Middle Ages.

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 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.

Prof Dónal Hassett
A colonial historian. Research focuses on two key interrelated fields of study: the history of the French Empire, in particular North Africa, and the legacies of conflict, especially veteran studies.

Prof Roisín Higgins
Research focuses on the dynamic relationship between past and present, and the ways in which individuals and societies remember and commemorate difficult and contested histories. Her current work concerns embodied memories of conflict with reference to the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

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.

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 Sarah Roddy
Research interests lie in modern Irish and British social, economic and religious history, including attitudes and responses of the Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican churches in Ireland to mass outward migration during the nineteenth century, nineteenth-century print culture, Irish missionaries and empire, various aspects of Ireland's 'spiritual empire', and religious fundraising.

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.