Since 1991, the Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies program has brought to Boston College a long and distinguished series of academics, writers, artists, journalists, librarians, and notable public figures who have made significant contributions to Irish cultural and intellectual life. Burns Visiting Scholars teach courses, offer public lectures, and engage with the rich resources of the John J. Burns Library in their ongoing research, writing, and creative endeavors.
The Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies program is a cooperative venture between Boston College's interdisciplinary Irish Studies program and the Boston College Libraries. It was established by and receives continuing support from the family and friends of the Honorable John J. Burns (Class of 1921), who also generously contributed to the creation of the John J. Burns Library and support the growth of its extraordinary collections pertaining to Irish history, literature, music, and culture. The Burns Visiting Scholar program has also benefited from support from the Office of the Provost.
In recognition of its 25th anniversary, Boston College Communications profiled the Burns Visiting Scholar program in a November 7, 2016 article. In October 2016, Irish America magazine also published a special supplement in celebration of this milestone. Read the article or download a copy.
Burns Visiting Scholar lectures since 2017 have been videorecorded and add the to the Burns Library Lectures playlist on the Boston College Libraries YouTube channel.
NOTE: Boston College is currently welcoming applications for the position of Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies for the calendar years 2026-2028. Details and application instructions are available from the Irish Studies website. The deadline for applications is March 23, 2025.
Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid is Professor in Irish History and Faculty Director of Education for Arts and Humanities at the University of Sheffield, where she has taught since 2013. She works primarily on Irish history, in particular the Irish Revolution, and more broadly the history of political violence and terrorism since the nineteenth century. Her current research engages the cultural history of the Irish Revolution, focusing particularly on the history of emotions.
Nic Dhábhéid's recent publications have traced the lives of the children of the men executed following the 1916 Easter Rising, exploring issues of memory, state commemorative practices, and the forging of personal identities in the shadow of national foundational myth. She has also been undertaking what she calls an ‘emotional history of the Irish Revolution,’ a project that aims to chart a new path for understanding how the Revolution was mobilised, experienced, understood and remembered. Taken together, her projects demonstrate that there was an emotional logic to the Irish Revolution as well as a political and military one.
In recent years, she has also been involved in commemorations of Irish history, including difficult and contested pasts. She was a member of the 2020-22 Centenary Historical Advisory Panel established by the Secretary of State of Northern Ireland, to advise on commemorating the partition of Ireland and the foundation of Northern Ireland. She is currently the co-chair of the Expert Advisory Panel to support the writing of an official history of British policy during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
Nic Dháibhéid studied history and French at University College Cork before master’s and doctoral degrees at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2009-10, she was appointed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, from 2010-2012 as a Rutherford Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and from 2012-2013 as a Research Fellow at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrew’s. Her research has also been supported by the Leverhulme Trust.
Nic Dhaibheid’s publications include two monographs, Terrorist Histories: Individuals and Political Violence since the 19th Century (Routledge, 2016) and Seán MacBride: A Republican Life, 1904-1946 (Liverpool University Press, 2011). She also co-edited a special issue of Contemporary European History, “New Histories of the Irish Revolution,” (32:4; Nov. 2023), Northern Ireland 1921-2021: Centenary Historical Perspectives (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2022) and From Parnell to Paisley: Constitutional and Revolutionary Politics in Modern Ireland (Irish Academic Press, 2010). She contributed chapters to Ireland, 1922: Independence, Partition, Civil War (Royal Irish Academy, 2022), The Cambridge Social History of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Uncertain Futures: Essays about the Irish Past for Roy Foster (Oxford University Press, 2016), among other collections of essays. Her articles have appeared in The Historical Journal, Irish Historical Studies, and other journals.
Nic Dhaibheid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2021.
COURSE:
The Irish Revolution: Living, Fighting and Dying in Ireland, 1916-1923
HIST4835
Tuesdays, 3:00pm - 05:25pm
Gasson Hall 205
Enrollment limited to 25 (full)
This course explores Ireland's revolution, including the rise of Irish republicanism and the partition of the island amidst bloody sectarian and political violence. Among the issues examined are the paramilitarisation of political culture, the nature and dynamics of revolutionary violence, and the entrenchment of divisions. Above all, the sense of what it was like to live through a revolution, as a rebel, a policeman, a soldier or a civilian, is a key unifying theme of this course. Together we shall explore the rich primary sources of the period, including personal correspondence, diaries, propaganda, witness statements, newspapers and police/army reports.
PUBLIC LECTURE:
Love in the Time of Revolution: Intimacy, Affection and Kinship in Ireland, 1916-1923
Wednesday, April 9, 5:00pm reception, 6:00pm lecture; free and open to the public
Burns Library
‘The spring bed will rock when we get out’, republican prisoners during the Irish Civil War told each other, an erotic imaginary of their longed-for reunions with their wives. The Irish Revolution of 1916-23 brought seismic political change to Ireland, but also wrought a transformation in personal relationships, creating new affective bonds and breaking others. Love in a time of revolution was not just a matter of deep affection, economic rationale or social place-finding, it was also a political declaration. Through revolutionary organisations, men and women met, courted, and married, sharing political as well as romantic passions. Yet the Revolution was also a moment of rupture in personal relationships, as imprisonment or death separated husbands from wives, sons and daughters from parents, and brothers from sisters, and severing friendships. In this lecture, Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid will explore the various forms of love which existed during the Irish Revolution - romantic, platonic, familial - and ask what a closer reading of affection and intimacy in these turbulent years might reveal about Irish revolutionary dynamics.
Burns Library will host a complimentary beer, wine, hors d'oeuvres reception beginning at 5:00pm, with Prof. Nic Dháibhéid’s lecture to follow at 6:00pm. For more information, please see the BC Events Calendar listing.
| Eve Watson | Fall 2025 |
| TBA | Spring 2026 |
NOTE: Boston College is currently welcoming applications for the position of Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies for the calendar years 2026-2028. Details and application instructions are available from the Irish Studies website. The deadline for applications is March 23, 2025.
Follow the link below to read about each of the more than forty Burns Visiting Scholars whom we have welcomed to campus since the program began in 1991. For several of our more recent scholars, you will find links to streaming recordings of their public lectures.
