Professor Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid
B.A. (UCC), M.A., Ph.D. (Queen’s University Belfast)
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Professor in Modern History
Director of Learning and Teaching
+44 114 222 2553
Full contact details
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I joined the university in the summer of 2013.
I studied History and French at University College Cork, before undertaking an M.A. and Ph.D. at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2009-10 I was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, and from 2010-2012 I was Rutherford Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
I work primarily on Irish history, in particular the Irish Revolution, and the history of political violence and terrorism since the nineteenth century. Currently I am turning my attention towards a cultural history of the Irish Revolution, focusing particularly on the history of emotions.
- Research interests
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I am currently engaged in two research projects. The first is a study of the children of the executed men of the Easter Rising of 1916.
Tracing their childhoods through the traumatic impact of the Rising, I follow the paths of these ‘national orphans’ to adulthood in the early years of the Irish state. All, whether politically engaged or not, grappled with their fathers’ deaths and the tensions between public and private identities, family memories and national hero-narratives, and the mingling of pride and grief.
More broadly, the book explores issues of memory, state commemorative practices, and the forging of personal identities in the shadow of national foundational myth, as well as the legacies of political violence.
The second project I am working on is entitled ‘An Emotional History of the Irish Revolution’.
This project aims to chart a new path for understanding how the Irish Revolution was mobilised, experienced, understood and remembered, by centring the history of emotions during these turbulent years.
My work will thus emphasise the contingency of revolutionary change in Ireland, showing why the specificities of emotional expression between 1916 and 1923 meant that revolution was then embedded amongst a significant proportion of the population, whereas previous efforts - in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1867 - had failed.
Taken together, my project will demonstrate that there is thus an emotional logic to the Irish Revolution as well as a political and military one.
- Publications
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Books
- Terrorist Histories: Individuals and Political Violence since the 19th Century. Routledge.
- Seán MacBride. Liverpool University Press.
Edited books
- Northern Ireland 1921-2021: Centenary
Historical Perspectives. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation.
- From Parnell to Paisley: Constitutional and Revolutionary Politics in Modern Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
Journal articles
- National Orphans and a Nation's Trauma: Experience, Emotions, and the Children of the 1916 Easter Rising Martyrs. Journal of British Studies, 62(3), 687-712.
- ‘Schooling the National Orphans’: the Education of the Children of the Easter Rising Leaders. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 9(2), 261-276. View this article in WRRO
- THE IRISH NATIONAL AID ASSOCIATION AND THE RADICALIZATION OF PUBLIC OPINION IN IRELAND, 1916–1918. The Historical Journal, 55(3), 705-729.
- 'This is a case in which Irish national considerations must be taken into account': The breakdown of the MacBride-Gonne marriage, 1904-8. Irish Historical Studies, 37(146), 241-264.
- National Orphans: Trauma, Emotions and Experiences of the Children of the 1916 Easter Rising Martyrs. Journal of British Studies.
- Historians and the Decade of Centenaries in modern Ireland. Contemporary European History.
Chapters
- 3.3.2 Revolutions and Civil Wars in Modern History (c. 1800–1900), The European Experience (pp. 339-350). Open Book Publishers
- Revolutions and Civil Wars in Modern History (c. 1800-1900), The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe (pp. 339-349).
- The Treaty Debates: The Politics of Emotions In McGarry F & Gannon D (Ed.), Ireland, 1922: Independence, Partition, Civil War Royal Irish Academy
- Afterword, The Cato Street Conspiracy Manchester University Press
- Fighting their Fathers’ Fight: The Post-Revolutionary Generation in Independent Ireland In Paseta S (Ed.), Uncertain Futures: Essays about the Irish Past for Roy Foster OUP
- Political Violence and the Irish Diaspora In Biagini E & Daly M (Ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Ireland since 1740 Cambridge University Press
- Throttling the IRA: Fianna Fáil and the Subversive Threat, 1939-1945 In Nic Dhaibheid C & Reid C (Ed.), From Parnell to Paisley: Constitutional and Revolutionary Politics in Modern Ireland (pp. 116-138). Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
- Throttling the IRA: Fianna Fáil and the Subversive Threat, 1939-1945 In Nic Dhaibheid C & Reid C (Ed.), From Parnell to Paisley: Constitutional and Revolutionary Politics in Modern Ireland (pp. 116-138). Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
- MacBride, (Edith) Maud Gonne, Dictionary of Irish Biography
- Civilians in the Military Services Pensions Collection In Dolan A, Gordon C & Crowe C (Ed.), The Military Service Pensions Collection
- Terrorist Histories: Individuals and Political Violence since the 19th Century. Routledge.
- Research group
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Research supervision
I warmly welcome enquiries from prospective students interested in pursuing research into Irish history, the history of political violence, and the cultural history of revolutions.
- Current Students
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Second Supervisor
- Completed Students
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- Rebecca Mytton - Revolutionary Masculinities in the IRA, 1916-1923.
- Gareth Roddy (second supervisor) - Into the West: The Literature of Travel in the Western Peripheries of the British-Irish Isles, c.1880-c.1940.
- Philip Back (second supervisor) - ‘If you build it, they will come': the origins of Scotland’s Country Parks.
- Teaching activities
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Undergraduate:
- HST295 - The History of Terrorism
- HST2036 - The Easter Rising: Living, Fighting and Dying in 1916
- HST3306 A Thematic History of Revolutions
- HST3136/37 - The Irish Revolution
- Professional activities and memberships
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Administrative roles:
- Admissions Tutor (2014-2016)
- Widening Participation Officer (2013-2016)
- Schools Liaison Officer (2013-2016)