Claire Connolly is Professor of Modern English at University College Cork (UCC). Her research and teaching interests include Irish writing; the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; romanticism in Ireland, Scotland and Wales; book history and environmental humanities. She is currently writing a book on Irish romanticism that will be published by the Cambridge University Press.
Professor Connolly's previous book, A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790–1829, also published by the Cambridge University Press, offers a cultural history of the Irish novel in the period between the radical decade of the 1790s and the gaining of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. It was the winner of the 2012 Donald J. Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book, American Conference for Irish Studies.
With Dr. Rob McAllen (School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UCC), Professor Connolly is Co-Principal Investigator of the interdisciplinary research project Deep Maps: West Cork Coastal Cultures (Irish Research Council New Horizons Award, 2015-2017).
Professor Connolly was previously on the faculty of Cardiff University and has been a visiting professor in Irish Studies at Boston College (2002-3) and Concordia University, Montreal (Fall 2011). She is Vice Chair (Ireland) of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature; and Co-Director of the Wales-Ireland Research Network.
Co-sponsors: John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values/Minor in Sustainability/Seminar in 18th- and 19th-Century Studies