Graduate of University College Dublin (1984); Masters degree scholarship 1984-86; NUI Travelling Studentship 1987 - studied in Italy, France and the UK; director Discovery Programme Tara Survey 1992-96. He was co-director of the Columbanus: life and legacy Project (PRTLI4 and Andrew Mellon Foundation) and member of the International Scientific Committee of Making Europe: Columbanus and his legacy, and is now co-directing In the Footsteps of Columbanus: Insular Reliquaries in Italy, a legacy project that arose from the discovery of a new Insular reliquary at a church site associated with Bobbio in Brallo di Pregola.Conors researchinterests arein landscape and kingship studies, early art and iconography, and heritage studies. He has worked extensively on the royal landscape of Tara, Co. Meath, Ireland. He is on the editorial board of Emania: Bulletin of the Navan Research Group.Conor is a vice-president of UNISCAPE(a network of over 50 European universities committed to landscape education and research, and delivery of the European Landscape Convention). He co-edited the proceedings of UNISCAPEs 2013 conference Landscape and Imagination: towards a new baseline for education in a changing world (Paris) and its 2016 conference Landscape Values: Place and Praxis (Galway). He is the co-ordinator of UNISCAPEs annual online seminar series Where the Disciplines Meet.Conor is a member of the Expert Advisory Board to the Erasmus+ CHARTER Project: European Cultural Heritage Skills Alliance (2021-24)He was awarded the British Academys John Coles Medal for Landscape Archaeology in 2011, and was chairman of the Heritage Council from 2008-2016.

Early kingship;royal complexes of Ireland; symbolism and iconographies of sacral kingship;Insular art AD 100-700; landscape archaeology

My teaching interests include late Iron Age Ireland, Royal sites and complexes, landscape archaeology and early medieval art and iconography,museumsandheritage.