History and Philosophy

Laurence Marley lectures in modern Irish and British history. During his doctoral research, he was the holder of both the Michael Davitt Fellowship and an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholarship. His research interests are in Anglo-Irish relations ¿ and Ireland¿s place in the British empire ¿ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

His research and publications are aligned with `Activism and Justice¿ and `Ireland in a Global Context¿, two of the History Department¿s principal fields of research. This is reflected in his contextual biography, Michael Davitt: Freelance Radical and Frondeur (2007), which situates its subject¿s agrarian and social-reform agitation within a wider international framework, drawing connections between transnational radicalism, anti-imperialism, and race politics in Europe, southern Africa, and Australasia. By highlighting Davitt¿s association with a British egalitarian tradition, together with his prominent role in advancing the cause of labour in Britain and Ireland, this work also demonstrates the inter-linked histories of `these islands¿.

These connections form the basis for Dr Marley¿s edited volume, The British Labour Party and Twentieth century Ireland (2016). This collection provides a unique perspective on Anglo-Irish relations by examining Labour policy on Ireland not in isolated episodes (especially in the recent past) but through the wider lens of an entire century, thereby rendering greater insights into longer-term dispositions in Labour mentalities towards Ireland.

His current research is focused on Irish colonial governors, expertise and bureaucracy in the nineteenth-century British imperial network. His interest in this aspect of the Irish elite abroad has developed, in part, from his involvement in the Landed Estates project at the University of Galway: https://landedestates.ie/about