Educational Background

• PhD. Candidate, Boston College, History
• M.A.: Boston College, 2008, History
• B.A.: Bridgewater State College, 2006, History

 
Research Interests:

American Civil War; American Immigration & Ethnicity; Race; Famine & post-Famine Ireland

 
Awards and Fellowships:

• 2011 Clough Center Summer Research Grant. Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College.
• 2011 Hibernian Research Award.  Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, Notre Dame University. 
• 2011 General and Mrs. Mathew B. Ridgway Military History Research Grant.  United States Army Military History Institute.
• 2010-11 Dissertation Research Fellowship.  History Department, Boston College.
• 2010 Clough Center Summer Research Grant. Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College.

 
Presentations:

• “‘America has been the grave of much noble Irish feeling’: The Transatlantic Irish and Slavery, 1840-1855.”  American Conference for Irish Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, April 2, 2011.
• “‘The mind of Ireland needs enlightenment on this question of Freedom’: Abolition and the Transatlantic Irish.” Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program conference: “Civil War-Global Conflict,” College of Charleston, March 3, 2011.
• “Irish Nationalism and Slavery in the Civil War Atlantic,” American Conference for Irish Studies, Pennsylvania State University, May 5, 2010.
•  “ ‘I have again donned the straps’: Stephen A. Swails and the Fight to Commission an African-American Officer,” presented at Graduate Student Conference: “The Civil War Era in Global Perspective,” George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, Pennsylvania State University, February 6, 2009.
• “ ‘…So nearly white’: Stephen A. Swails and Black Officers in the 54th Massachusetts,” New England Historical Association Conference, October 25, 2008.
• “Charles Francis Adams, Great Britain, and the ‘American Question’ in 1861,” Symposium for Undergraduate Research, Bridgewater State College, Spring 2006.
• “The Trent Affair and the Dramatic End to 1861,” presented at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research, University of North Carolina at Asheville, Spring 2006.