Kevin Whalen , one of Ireland’s best known and widely published historians, was named the Smurfit Director of the Keough-Notre Dame Center in Ireland in 1998. He has previously taught at University College Dublin, University College Galway, and St. Patrick’s College Maynooth. He is a former Newman Scholar at University College Dublin, and Bicentennial Research Fellow at the Royal Irish Academy. He has been a visiting professor at New York University, Boston College and Concordia University (Montreal). He has lectured in over a dozen countries, including the Sorbonne, Cambridge, Oxford, Torino, Berkeley, Yale and Louvain.

A native of County Wexford, Ireland, Kevin received a bachelor’s degree at University College Dublin in 1978, and a doctorate from the National University of Ireland in 1981. He subsequently was awarded a Travelling Studentship from the National University of Ireland which he held at Memorial University, Newfoundland. He has published fourteen books and almost 100 articles on Ireland’s history, geography, and culture. Among these are The Tree of Liberty. Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity 1760-1830 (1996, reprinted 1998), Fellowship of Freedom: The United Irishmen and the 1798 Rebellion (1998), and the bestseller Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (1997, reprinted 1997, 1998). His next book is The Killing Snows: Cultural Change in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Kevin is also actively engaged in the public life of Ireland. Since 1996, he has been historical advisor to the Irish government on the Famine and the 1798 Rebellion.