Ian McBride will deliver the 2017 Hibernian Lecture, presented by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and co-sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.
Professor McBride is the Foster Professor of Irish History at Hertford College, University of Oxford. His research has focused on 18th-century Ireland as well as the role of historians in making sense of the Northern Ireland conflict.
He has received a Leverhulme Major Research Award to produce a study of Catholic Ireland under the penal laws. Like the Great Famine and the Easter Rising, the persecution suffered by Irish Catholics during the "Penal Times" is a central component of Irish national mythology. Professor McBride's current research addresses how the 18th-century penal code was implemented and how it reshaped Catholic Ireland. Much of the research will be carried out in Rome, where a number of exceptionally rich archives have yet to be properly exploited.