Geography, Archaeology & Irish Studies

Having graduated with First Class Honours in Irish and Léann Dúchais (Irish and Cognate Studies) at UCC, Louis de Paor completed his doctoral research on narrative technique in the short fiction of Máirtín Ó Cadhain under the supervision of Seán Ó Tuama and was awarded a PhD by the National University of Ireland in 1986 for his thesis, Teicníocht agus aigneolaíocht san insint liteartha; anailís ar mhúnlaí teicníochta agus ar mhúnlaí tuisceana i dteanga na hinste i ngearrscéalta Mháirtín Uí Chadhain. He spent time as a lecturer in Irish at UCC and Thomond College, Limerick, before moving to Australia in 1987, where he worked in local and ethnic radio in Melbourne and taught evening classes in Irish language and literature at Melbourne University and the Melbourne Council for Adult Education. He was Visiting Professor of Celtic Studies at Sydney University in 1993 and Visiting Fellow in 1992. He returned to Ireland in 1996 and worked as proof editor of the Irish language newspaper Foinse before being appointed Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway in 2000. His published works include a monograph on the work of Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Faoin mblaoisc bheag sin: an aigneolaíocht i scéalta Mháirtín Uí Chadhain (1991), an anthology of twentieth-century poetry in Irish, Coiscéim na haoise seo (1991), co-edited with Seán Ó Tuama, a bilingual edition of the selected poems of Máire Mhac an tSaoi, An paróiste míorúilteach/The miraculous parish (2011) and a critical edition of the selected poems of Liam S Gógan, Míorúilt an chleite chaoin (2012). He was Jefferson Smurfit Distinguished Fellow at the University of St Louis-Missouri in 2002 and received the Charles Fanning medal from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2009. He was a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at New York University and UC Berkeley in 2013-14 and Burns Scholar at Boston College in 2016.