Sean Duffy
Professor
Medieval History
Trinity College Dublin
Ireland
Biography
Seán Duffy is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, from which he also holds an M.Litt and a Ph.D. He is a Fellow of the College, where he has lectured since 1993 and is currently Professor in Medieval History. He has supervised 20 current or completed PhDs, has been been Head of Department, a member of the Board of Trinity College Dublin, and Secretary to the Fellows. He has written or edited more than 30 books and more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and book-chapters, has organized 27 conferences, given over 30 keynotes or international invited lectures, and served on 10 editorial or advisory boards. Since 1998 he has been Chairman of the Friends of Medieval Dublin, an influential not-for-profit advocacy organization and is much involved in pro bono consultative and advisory work on matters relating to history and heritage, particularly with Dublin City Council. Since 1999 he has organized an annual interdisciplinary conference on medieval Dublin, the proceedings of which are published each year by Four Courts Press. In 2013 he co-founded the Trinity Medieval Ireland Symposium, held biennially, the proceedings of which are published in a new Four Courts Press series, and he also a founder and organizer of prestigious biennial James Lydon Lectures in Medieval History and Culture, the volumes of which appear in a dedicated Cambridge University Press series.
Research Interest
Seán Duffy specializes in the history of medieval Ireland and, in particular, three aspects: first, the political history of Ireland from the Viking Age to the Bruce Invasion; second, Irish relations with England, Scotland, and Wales in the same period; and third, the history and archaeology of medieval Dublin.
Publications
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The Bruce brothers and the Irish Sea world, 1306-29, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 21 (1991), 55-86.
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Irishmen and Islesmen in the kingdoms of Dublin and Man, 1052-1171, Ériu, 43 (1992), 93-133.
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The first Ulster plantation: John de Courcy and the men of Cumbria, in Robin Frame et al. (eds), Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland: essays presented to J.F. Lydon (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), pp 1-27.
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John and the origins of England’s Irish problem, in S.D. Church (ed.), King John: new interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), pp 221-45.
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Historical revisit: Goddard Henry Orpen, Ireland under the Normans, 1169-1333 (1911-20), Irish Historical Studies, 37 (2000), 246-59.
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The British perspective, in S.H. Rigby (ed.), A companion to Britain in the later middle ages (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), pp 165-83.
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The lords of Galloway, earls of Carrick, and the Bissets of the Glens: Scottish settlement in thirteenth-century Ulster in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100-1650 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), pp 37-50.
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Town and crown: the kings of England and their city of Dublin, in Michael Prestwich et al. (eds), Thirteenth Century England X (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), pp 95–117.
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Ireland, c.1000-c.1100, in Pauline Stafford (ed.), A companion to the early Middle Ages. Britain and Ireland c.500-c.1100 (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 285-302.
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The hermits of St Augustine in medieval Dublin: their history and archaeology, in John Bradley et al. (eds), Dublin in the Medieval World: Studies in honour of Howard B. Clarke (Dublin: Four Courts, 2009), pp 202-48. [with Linzi Simpson]
