Burns Scholar Fearghal McGarry

Fearghal McGarry, Professor of Modern Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast, is the spring 2021 Burns Scholar. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, he has written or edited eleven volumes on Irish history. His recent research focuses on the Irish revolution and the cultural and political revival from which it emerged. His publications include The Rising (2010) and The Abbey Rebels of 1916: A Lost Revolution (2015). Earlier work, including studies of Ireland and the Spanish Civil War and biographies of Frank Ryan and Eoin O’Duffy, explored Ireland in an interwar-European context.

In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh and Boston College, Professor McGarry leads a major UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project, A Global History of Irish Revolution 1916-1923. Underpinned by museum exhibitions and educational resources, this research includes special issues of Irish Historical Studies and History Ireland and a forthcoming publication by New York University Press. It is having a major scholarly and public impact as it places the Irish revolution within its transnational and global contexts. The project will culminate with an international conference held at Boston College in September 2021. Professor McGarry's Burns Lecture is scheduled for Wednesday March 31 at 2:00 p.m. 

The title of his talk is ‘Communism, sex, and all that jazz: the struggle against modernity in interwar Ireland.’