Staff
Dr Joseph Flahive, Academic Director
Dr Flahive is a professional mediaevalist. Upon completion of his doctoral thesis (The Relic Lays: A Study in Late Middle-Gaelic Fianaigheacht) in Celtic at the University of Edinburgh in 2004, he proceeded to University College Cork, as Research Assistant (2004-6) to the LOCUS Project’s Historical Dictionary of Gaelic Place-Names in the Department of Early and Mediaeval Irish. He has held a two-year Government of Ireland Fellowship to study the autograph manuscripts of the Ó Cléirigh recension of Leabhar Gabhála and a UCC Department of History fellowship in Armarium Codicum Hibernensium, during which he researched and prepared a facsimile of The St Gall Gospels. He has taught in the Department of Early and Mediaeval Irish and the Department of Classics in University College Cork. Dr Flahive is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. His research focuses on Ireland’s manuscript heritage and mediaeval Irish literature, especially synthetic history and the fianaigheacht.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Mr Anthony Hartnett, General Manager
Mr Hartnett holds a BA in English and Geography, a Higher Diploma in Education and an MA in English from University College Cork. He also has a Certificate in Irish Archaeology and a Diploma in Development Studies from the same university. He has taught at second level in Ireland, the UK, the USA, and Spain; he was seconded by the Department of Education to the EU school system in Luxembourg and Brussels for nine years. He has also tutored in the Department of English and lectures in Adult and Continuing Education at University College Cork. He has recently returned from Bahrain where he tutored English in the new Bahrain Polytechnic. He brings valuable expertise to the creation and design of the Trust’s educational programmes as well as to operational management.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Ms Sinéad Deignan, Development Director
Ms Deignan completed her BA in the National University of Ireland, Dublin while concurrently completing a diploma in Law with the Law Society of Ireland. Her MA dissertation treated the so-called Secret of Secrets or Letter from Aristotle to Alexander on the Government of Princes in NUI, Dublin. She has acquired professional experience in communications, as PA to the Directors of Designworks, Dublin - a company that specialises in corporate identity, marketing and advertising and as Personal Assistant to Mr Aengus Fanning, Editor of The Sunday Independent. She co-founded and managed the Armarium Codicum Hibernensium Project, Department of History, University College Cork from 2005- 2010 whilst concurrently undertaking doctoral research. In 2008 she completed a Higher Diploma in Education.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Ms Anne Connon, Researcher
Anne Connon is an historian specialising in early and later mediaeval Ireland, trained at The University of Toronto and University College Dublin. She began her career lecturing in mediaeval history at the National University of Ireland, Galway, followed by a two-year research fellowship at NUI Galway’s Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change (now the Moore Institute). This experience led to a position as an historian with the Discovery Programme. She has acted as historical consultant on a number of different archaeological projects, including University College Cork’s ‘Making Christian Landscapes’ project; the Moygara Castle Research Project; and a number of projects with the National Roads Authority. In 2008, she was Visiting Professor at the Department of Celtic Studies, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. Her research interests include secular and ecclesiastical settlement history, genealogy, early Irish queenship, and the historical dimension of the Fenian saga Acallam na Senórach.
Dr James Lyttleton, Researcher
Dr Lyttleton graduated from University College Dublin with a BA in Archaeology and History in 1995 and a MA in Archaeology in 1997. He has worked as a researcher in the Discovery Programme in Dublin, contributing to Foragers, farmers and fishers in a coastal landscape (Dublin, 2001). James has taught mediaeval Irish archaeology in the Department of Archaeology in University College Cork, where he wrote his PhD on the archaeology of seventeenth-century English plantations in Co. Offaly, Ireland. In 2008 he was awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship in Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada to carry out a comparative archaeological study of settlements established by the Lords Baltimore in seventeenth-century Ireland, Newfoundland, and Maryland. He has co-edited and contributed to a number of scholarly publications arising from this research.
Mr Gavin Dillon, Associated Scholar
Gavin Dillon completed his BA (Hons) in Celtic Civilisation in University College Cork in 2006. He continued in that institution with his PhD in the same department, entitled Betha Cholmáin maic Luacháin: An Ecclesiastical Microcosm of the Twelfth-Century Irish Midlands. His thesis having been submitted in 2011 and passed by viva voce examination, Gavin Dillon awaits the award of his doctorate. His research interests focus around Irish hagiography from the mediaeval period, particularly hagiography of the twelfth century, and socio-political information contained therein. He investigates the Lives of the saints (Bethada) to unravel the subtle – yet important – historical, economic, social, and cultural information that they contain. Aspects of performance of mediaeval Irish religious material is also of great interest.
Dr Richard Hawtree, Associated Scholar
After taking degrees at Exeter College, Oxford (BA, English, 2002) and Trinity College, Dublin (M.Phil, Mediaeval Language, Literature, and Culture, 2004), Richard Hawtree completed his doctoral thesis Vox Meditans: Reading, Meditation and the Idea of ‘Voice’ in Old English Poetry at University College, Cork in 2009. This dissertation, funded by an IRCHSS postgraduate scholarship, focused upon the Latin and vernacular texts of Anglo-Saxon England, arguing that manuscript productions such as the Exeter Book (ca. 1000 A.D.) are most fruitfully interpreted in the light of the complex traditions of early mediaeval monastic spirituality. From April 2009 until September 2011 Richard Hawtree was Associate Investigator on the IRCHSS-funded (Grant in Theology and Religious Studies, 2008) project Christ on the Cross: Textual and Material Representations of the Passion in Early Mediaeval Ireland (ca. 800-1200). His research interests encompass Hiberno-Latin Exegesis, early mediaeval monastic liturgy and the relationship between Latin, and the vernacular textual cultures of the Insular world.
Dr Paul MacCotter, Associated Scholar
Dr Paul MacCotter began his career as a genealogist and independent scholar with an especial interest in the lineages originating during the Anglo-Norman period. Obtaining his MA in 1994 and his Ph.D in 2006 in UCC, he extended his research interests to include the administrative structures of Anglo-Norman Ireland and of High Mediaeval Gaelic Ireland. He has published three books and numerous journal papers in local and national journals. Dr MacCotter worked as principal historical consultant to the Making Christian Landscapes project in the school of Archaeology in UCC, and is currently an IRCHSS fellow with the school of History, UCC, researching the landed estates of the Early Irish Church. His most recent book, Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions, has been described by one reviewer as ‘a paradigm shifting work’. MacCotter’s research interests include mediaeval economic and administrative divisions in general, but with special reference to those units, in particular parishes, townlands and túatha, remaining in need of elucidation.
Hugh Fogarty, Associated Scholar
Hugh Fogarty is a scholar of mediaeval Irish literature and culture. He holds the degrees of BA (English Language and Literature, 1989) and MPhil (Mediaeval Studies, 1993) from University College Dublin, and a PhD (Celtic Languages and Literatures, 2005) from Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard, UCD, and the University of Notre Dame, and has been an associate scholar of the (IRCHSS-funded) De Finibus project at University College Cork (http://www.definibus.ucc.ie). He is currently editor of the Thesaurus Linguae Hibernicae, a project of UCD’s School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics, which ‘aims to provide web access to digital editions of texts in Early and Medieval Irish as a research tool for scholars and resource for teachers’ (http://www.ucd.ie/tlh).
