Robert O'Sullivan

Robert O’Sullivan

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Robert O’Sullivan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. He completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge in 2024, where he was the convenor of the Modern Irish History Seminar in the Faculty of History. Dr. O’Sullivan is a political and social historian of nineteenth-century American and Irish history. At The Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Dr. O’Sullivan is completing his first book, Nationalism, Imperialism and Anti-Slavery: The Irish-American Press in the Era of Emancipation, 1840-1865. The monograph explores the writings and activism of a series of Irish-American newspaper editors and their readers, and examines how they contributed to the process by which Irish immigrant, diasporic identity took root in the United States, by engaging with political developments across the globe. In addition, the monograph assesses why the Irish-American editors rejected the American abolitionist movement and anti-slavery politics in the United States, when they were so willing to draw connections between Ireland and other areas within the 19th century imperial world and to cross the color line when drawing explicit comparisons between the Irish and Indian, Chinese, and Creole communities.

Dr. O’Sullivan has published peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of American Ethnic History, Pennsylvania History, Éire-Ireland, The Historical Journal, Irish Historical Studies, Journal of the Early Republic, and Civil War History. Dr. O’Sullivan has received several accolades for his research, including the 2023 Robert G. Crist Pennsylvania History Prize; Honorable Mention for the American Journalism Historians Association Margaret A. Blanchard Prize; a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society; the William Reese Company Fellowship in American Bibliography from the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

At The Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Dr. O’Sullivan will also begin work on two new projects. The first, Forging Irish America before the Famine: Mathew Carey, a Revolutionary Life, will be a study of the career and impact of Mathew Carey, (1760-1836), the Irish-American publisher, economist, humanitarian and philanthropist, and will assess his importance to American immigration history. The second project is a study of Irish immigrant attitudes towards Reconstruction and Redemption after 1865, and the legacy of pre-Civil war anti-abolitionism on Irish-American opposition to African American suffrage in the Reconstruction era.

If you would like to be in contact with Dr. O’Sullivan, you can find him at rosulli2@nd.edu.