Education

PhD, Columbia University, 1994

Fields of Interest

American immigration; global migration and diaspora

Academic Profile

Professor Kenny's principal area of research and teaching is the history of American immigration and labor, with an emphasis on transatlantic migration and popular protest since 1700. His first book, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998), examines how traditions of agrarian protest in nineteenth-century Ireland were translated into an American industrial setting. His most recent book, Peaceable Kingdom Lost (2009), examines the encounter between colonists and Native Americans in the eighteenth century. He is also editor of Ireland and the British Empire: The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (2004). Professor Kenny is currently researching the general history of American immigration and writing a book on the concept of diaspora.

For a list of PhD dissertations that Prof. Kenny has supervised, please click here.

Representative Publications

• Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (2009).
• The Irish: Towards the USA (2006). An illustrated history. Hardcover, 103 pages, with 90 illustrations. Published simultaneously in Italian (Giuliana Olivero, trans.) as Gli irlandesi che hanno fatto l’America.
• Ireland and the British Empire, Editor (2004)
• "Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study," Journal of American History (June 2003)
• New Directions in Irish-American History (2003)
• The American Irish: A History (2000)
• "Development of the Working Classes" Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century America (1999)
• Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998)