Professor Patrick Geoghegan

Professor Patrick Geoghegan is a leading scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland, with a particular expertise on the changing nature of the Anglo-Irish relationship in this period. His work on the Irish Act of Union and its aftermath, the rebellion of Robert Emmet, and the political and legal career of Daniel O'Connell, culminating in five monographs, has been recognised both nationally and internationally, and has helped reshape perspectives on the changing relationship between constitutional nationalism and republicanism. These themes are also explored in his teaching, and Geoghegan uses innovative teaching and assessment methods to encourage students to become independent and critical thinkers. In recognition of this he was awarded the Provost's Teaching Award in 2009. He began working in Trinity in 1999, teaching on the Trinity Access Programme, and since 2001 in the School of Histories and Humanities. Geoghegan's engagement in public outreach has also been a distinctive feature of his work. The presenter of the award-winning 'Talking History' on Newstalk radio, he has brought the discipline of history to a wide popular audience, and its weekly podcasts are among the most downloaded in the country. A Vice-President of the Irish Legal History Society, he has supported an interdisciplinary approach to legal and historical studies. Between 2011 and 2014 he was the Senior Lecturer/Dean of Undergraduate Studies for Trinity College Dublin, and during that time developed new policies on admissions and the undergraduate curriculum. Among his contributions were the feasibility study in admissions, the Trinity Explore website, and the Northern Ireland Engagement Programme. Professor Geoghegan is also a Vice-President of the College Historical Society, and is writing a new history of the society for its 250th anniversary in 2020. He was the principal investigator for a major research project which saw a new history, Trinity in War and Revolution, dealing with the critical period 1912-1923, by Dr. Tomás Irish, published by the Royal Irish Academy in the autumn of 2015. Professor Geoghegan also researches and teaches on the History of the United States in the Civil War era and beyond. In terms of publications, his acclaimed two-volume study of Daniel O'Connell completed his examination of the tensions and conflicts which emerged following the abolition of the Irish parliament. The first volume provided a new analysis of the winning of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 while the second discussed the attempts to repeal the Union which failed so dramatically in the 1840s. A Vice-President of the College Historical Society (and a former gold medalist for oratory at the L&H), Professor Geoghegan has always been interested in the role of oratory in political debate and how oratory shaped political discourse. His current work develops from these interests and examines how Edmund Burke both succeeded and failed in using oratory to change the nature of imperial debate in the eighteenth century.

  Anglo-Irish connections   Ireland and the United States   Ireland in the Eighteenth Century   Robert Emmet

The Anglo-Irish Relationship, Ireland in the 18th century, the United States in the 19th Century