Dr Liam Chambers

I grew up in Derry and studied for my BA, research MA and PhD at what is now Maynooth University. I joined the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College in 2000 and have been Head of Department since my appointment in 2011. My early research concerned the history of radical politics in late eighteenth-century Ireland, a subject that continues to fascinate me. My focus then moved to the history of Irish migrants in early modern France, beginning with a study of the philosopher Michael Moore, the subject of my PhD dissertation. This led to further work on Irish clergy, students and colleges in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. My main research project is a long-term study of the Irish colleges in Paris from their beginnings in the 1570s through to the late twentieth century. I am also interested in the history of Irish Catholics and Catholicism more generally, particularly in the ‘long’ eighteenth century. I recently edited The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume III: Relief, Revolution, and Revival, 1746-1829 (Oxford, 2023). I was joint editor of the journal Irish Historical Studies from 2016 to 2021. I am a current member of the Irish Manuscripts Commission.