Lecturer in Classics, University of Galway (Ireland)

About

I am a Latinist who researches cultural history spanning especially Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (fourth to ninth centuries AD). I study the codification of Graeco-Roman literature and learning in the later Roman Empire, and how this knowledge survived and remained influential in the post-Roman period. I have a particular interest in the Irish dimension to this story.

My work focuses in particular on the themes of education, scholarship and language interaction. I work on manuscripts and texts that contain Latin (including Hiberno-Latin), Greek and Old Irish. I also have expertise in Digital Humanities (especially digital editions and databases).

(I pronounce my first name like IPA [ˈpɑːɹɪk] or the English words PAW-Rick.)

Research publications

My publications have focused in particular on Latin and Old Irish grammars, glosses and glossaries. These include digital editions of early Irish glossaries and Irish glosses on Priscian’s Latin grammar. In 2019, I published a 592-page monograph edition of the seventh-century text De origine scoticae linguae (O’Mulconry’s Glossary), which is a valuable witness to the reception of Latin educational texts in Ireland.

I have compiled an online catalogue of early Irish manuscripts containing Latin texts.

I also work on broader comparative cultural studies, with a special interest in Japan and East Asia. This is a major component of my new research project, GLOSSAM (see below).

Career

After receiving my PhD from the University of Galway (then National University of Ireland, Galway) in 2007, I worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge and then again at the University of Galway.

I have been Lecturer in Classics at the University of Galway since 2012. I am also an Associate Director at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

I am a founding member of the Network for the Study of Glossing.

During 2022–26, I am working as Principal Investigator on the Irish Research Council Laureate project Global and Local Scholarship on Annotated Manuscripts (GLOSSAM).