Staff and Scholars Past and Present
Dr John McCafferty, Director
Dr John McCafferty is the Director of the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute and current head of UCD School of History and Archives. His expertise is on ecclesiastical history particularly the reformation and counter-reformation in Ireland. Most recently he has become heavily involved in a major research project on Franciscan historic libraries. Dr McCafferty is the author of John Bramhall and the reconstruction of the Church of Ireland 1633-1641 (Cambridge, 2007), among numerous other publications. He is also a co-editor of The Irish Franciscans 1534-1990 (Dublin, 2009). He is a member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. His research profile is available here.
Dr Joseph MacMahon OFM
Dr Joseph MacMahon OFM is Secretary of the Irish Franciscan Province. He holds degrees in history, philosophy and theology from the National University of Ireland Galway (B.A.) and the Catholic University of Louvain (Ph.B, S.T.D., Ph.D.). He lectured in theology in Catholic institutes in Latin America and Africa. He was one of the co-editors of The Irish Franciscans 1534-1990 (Dublin, 2009). In recent years, he has worked on the Irish Franciscan contribution to Scotism and is a member of the UCD-OFM Partnership Committee that oversees the work of the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute.
Dr Edel Bhreathnach
Dr Edel Bhreathnach is a medieval historian who has worked on many topics in early and late medieval Irish history. She is former deputy director of the Institute and is now director of the (opens in a new window)Discovery Programme. She is editor of The kingship and landscape of Tara (Dublin, 2005). She is co-editor of Writing Irish History. The Four Masters and their world (Dublin, 2007), a catalogue of an exhibition held in Trinity College Library in 2007. She is also co-editor of The Irish Franciscans 1534-1990 (Dublin, 2009).
Dr Bernadette Cunningham
Dr Bernadette Cunningham is Deputy Librarian in the (opens in a new window)Royal Irish Academy. She is the author of The world of Geoffrey Keating: history and myth and religion in seventeenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2000), co-author (with Raymond Gillespie) of Stories from Gaelic Ireland: micorhistories from the sixteenth-century Irish annals (Dublin, 2003) and co-editor of Writing Irish History. The Four Masters and their world. Her monograph, The Annals of the Four Masters. Irish history, kingship and society in the early seventeenth century (Dublin, 2010) surveys the scholarly and political context that inspired the seventeenth-century annalists and reconstructs the networks of professional expertise and patronage that contributed to the pursuit of scholarship about the Irish past.
Dr Benjamin Hazard
Dr Benjamin Hazard was the ‘Louvain 400’ Fellow at the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute and is an expert in Irish connections with Europe in the seventeenth century. His work with the Institute involved a major conservation and digitisation project on the UCD-OFM Wadding Papers. Images from the papers are available on the (opens in a new window)UCD Digital Library. He is the author of Faith and patronage. The political career of Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire c. 1560-1620 (Dublin, 2009).
Dr Malgorzata Krasnodebska D’Aughton
Dr Malgorzata D’Aughton is a medieval historian, who specialises in the cultural and religious history of the Middle Ages. She lectures on the religious orders, art and religious devotion and Irish monasticism in the (opens in a new window)School of History, University College Cork. Between 2004 and 2008, as an IRCHSS Research Fellow at the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, she carried out a pioneering survey of medieval and early modern artefacts from existing mendicant houses in Ireland. Dr D’Aughton advised on the Franciscan Faith: Sacred Art in Ireland 1600-1750 exhibition currently on display in the National Museum of Ireland Collins Barracks. Images from the project can be seen on the (opens in a new window)UCD Digital Library.
Dr Frank Lawrence
Dr Frank Lawrence is Lecturer in Early Music History at the UCD School of Music. He is a graduate in Music and Modern Irish of NUI Maynooth and a Theology graduate of the Pontifical University, Maynooth. He was awarded a graduate scholarship by the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute and an IRCHSS Government of Ireland scholarship for his doctoral dissertation. His principal research is on manuscript sources of the medieval chant traditions of the British Isles and northwestern Europe. He is a contributor and advisory editor to the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (EMIR).
Dr Vincent Morley
Dr Vincent Morley is a former research fellow of the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute. He is author of An Crann os Coill: Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín c.1680-1755 (Dublin, 1995), Irish Opinion and the American Revolution, 1760-1783 (Cambridge, 2002) and Washington i gCeannas a Ríochta: Cogadh Mheiriceá agus Litríocht na Gaeilge (Dublin, 2005). He has recently edited an anthology of the poetry of Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín which will be the fifth volume in Field Day's 'Filí' series. He is currently writing a book on the development of popular views of the Irish past from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Dr Emmet O’Byrne
Dr Emmett O’Byrne is a historian of late medieval and early modern Ireland. He is the author of War, politics and the Irish of Leinster, 1156-1606 (Dublin, 2003). He worked as a contributor to the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography from 1999-2003 and was awarded a Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute research fellowship (2003-6). He is currently working on a monograph on the Wicklow chieftain Feagh McHugh O’Byrne (d. 1597), one of the supporters of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell during the Nine Years War.
Dr Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB
Dr Colmán Ó Clabaigh is a monk of Glenstal Abbey Co. Limerick and a former research fellow of the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute. He is the author of The Franciscans in Ireland 1400-1534 (Dublin, 2002) . He co-edited The Irish Benedictines: a history (Dublin, 2005) and also Art and devotion in late medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2006). His monograph, The friars in Ireland 1224-1540 (forthcoming) is a survey of the history and lifestyle of the mendicant friars in Ireland beginning with the arrival of the Dominicans in Dublin in 1224 and concluding with the Dissolution campaign of 1540.