Sean Connolly

Sean Joseph Connolly (born 9 December 1951) is an Irish historian specialising initially in the social history of Irish Catholicism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, later expanding to post-Reformation and early modern Ireland and modern Belfast. Born in Dublin, he studied at University College Dublin and the New University of Ulster, held positions at the Public Record Office of Ireland, St Patrick’s College, and the New University of Ulster, and served as Professor of Irish History at Queen’s University Belfast from 1996 to 2017, now Professor Emeritus and Visiting Research Professor in Irish Studies. He is the author of several books including Contested Island and Divided Kingdom, and was general editor of The Oxford Companion to Irish History.