Biography

I am a historian who specialises in the intellectual, literary and religious culture of Britain and Ireland, with a particular focus on Ireland from the seventh to twelfth centuries. I am a lecturer in the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth University, Ireland, and also am currently Visiting Senior Fellow in Humanities at the University of Suffolk, UK.

I am the author of a best-selling volume of essays, Fierce Appetites (Penguin, 2022), which was shortlisted for Non-fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2022, as well as a research monograph, History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland (Routledge, 2021).

Many of my journal articles and book chapters are available here on this website. I am also the editor, with Paul Russell, of The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes (1830-1909) (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011); with Deborah Hayden, of Authorities and Adaptations: the Reworking and Transmission of Textual Sources in Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2014); and, with Ruairí Ó hUiginn, of Book of Uí Mhaine (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2023).

I have an MA in Celtic (Medieval) with First Class Honours from the University of Glasgow; an MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge; and a PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, also from the University of Cambridge. From 2009-2012 I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge, and from 2012-2013 I held a Marie Curie Fellowship in the Historical Humanities at University College Cork. I was appointed to my post in Maynooth in 2013. Since then, I have held numerous international visiting fellowships and delivered many plenary lectures in the fields of medieval and Celtic studies, including being appointed Robyn Doohan Visiting Fellow, University of Sydney, in 2025, and delivering the O’Donnell Lecture, University of Oxford, in 2022, the Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecture, University of Cambridge, in 2023, and the William Matthews Memorial Lecture, Birkbeck, University of London, also in 2023.

I am a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, and I serve on the editorial board of the Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe series for Brepols. I am co-organiser of the Medieval Irish Manuscripts conference series, a collaboration with the Royal Irish Academy Library. I am General Editor of the Paul Walsh Memorial Lectures, hosted by Maynooth University. I am a member of the Irish Federation of University Teachers, and the Irish Association of Professional Historians.

If you are interested in pursuing postgraduate or postdoctoral research under my supervision, you can contact me via my Maynooth University email address, which you can find on my university webpage.