Feliks Levin

Global Irish Studies Postdoctoral Fellow

Feliks Levin is a Global Irish Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. He is a scholar of medieval and early modern Irish and British history and literature, with a particular focus on identities, historical writing, political thought, and state formation. He received his PhD in Early Modern European History from the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2018. His dissertation examined myth and protonational history in Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, one of the most influential seventeenth-century Irish-language historical narratives.

At the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Dr Levin is writing a monograph entitled Negotiating Composite Monarchy and Empire in Early Modern Irish Historical Writing and Poetry. Engaging with Irish-language and Neo-Latin historical writing and poetry produced by Irish Catholic authors of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds during the formative period between 1541 and 1691, the book explores how Irish authors conceptualized their place within a larger composite monarchy and articulated relationships with other regions and peripheries of Britain. The study examines major historical narratives, including Irish-language works by Geoffrey Keating (1580–1644) and Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (c. 1600–1671), as well as Neo-Latin prose works by Stephen White (1574–1646), Philip O’Sullivan Beare (1590–1660), John Lynch (1599–1677), and Roderic O’Flaherty (1629–1718). It also considers vernacular poetry by Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird (c. 1540–c. 1618), Eochaidh Ó hEódhusa (c. 1568–1612), and Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (c. 1625–1698), alongside anonymous Irish-language and Neo-Latin poems from the Tudor and Stuart periods. Focusing on interconnected themes including sovereignty and empire, visions of the past and identities, and gender, the monograph seeks to highlight the archipelagic dimensions of Irish Catholic political discourse and to situate it within the broader history of political thought in Britain and Ireland.

Dr Levin’s peer-reviewed publications include articles in Studia Hibernica, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, and Études irlandaises, as well as chapters in the edited volumes Irish Migrations and Classical Antiquity (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), Propaganda and History in the Medieval Celtic Lands: Interrogating a Paradigm (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2026), and The Ulster and Finn Cycles: Studies in Gaelic Heroic Literature (D. S. Brewer, forthcoming). He is currently co-editing Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Empire (1530s–1790s): New Sources and Perspectives, forthcoming from Uppsala University Press. The volume grew out of the panel discussion Sources from the Margins: Reflections on the Empire in Ireland, Scotland and Wales (1530s–1790s), organised by Dr Levin at the Centre for Irish Studies at Aarhus University, which brought together leading scholars of early modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh history and literature.

Before joining Notre Dame, Dr Levin was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2025) and subsequently a guest researcher at the Centre for Irish Studies at Aarhus University. His research there investigated the influence of Greek and Roman models on the emergence of Irish protonational discourse and on the vindication of the Irish past in the historical writings of Geoffrey Keating, Philip O’Sullivan Beare, and John Lynch. From 2017 to 2023, he taught medieval, early modern, and modern European and World history at the Department of History of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg.

Dr Levin can be contacted at flevin@nd.edu