My main research and teaching interests are in global history, especially the areas of environmental history, global justice, and NGOs. I am currently working on two projects. The first, 'Green Fractures: Capitalism, Climate, and Community in Ireland since the 1970s', examines Ireland's socio-economic transformation over the past half-century through the lens of environmental history. It looks at how the Irish experience of late capitalism was as much ecological as it was economic, social or political, and asks how the social fracturing that characterised that period was conditioned through conversations with the island's climate and landscape, and human attempts to control it. 

The second, related, project, is titled 'Sustainability in Practice: A Global History, from the Oil Crisis to the SDGs' and examines how past communities understood the concept of `sustainable development, how this informed their decision-making, and what this can tell us about human adaptation to climate change. How did practitioners imagine and model sustainable energy regimes? What alternative forms of economic organisation did they develop? And how did they plan ecologically sustainable polities? In answering these questions, my aim is to develop a new understanding of the social, political, cultural, and economic factors that governed how societies imagined `sustainability and their pursuit of it.

As part of that research, I am currently involved with two funded research collaborations. The two-year 'Sites of Fracture' project (2025-2027), on which I am co-lead, explores the history of twentieth-century Ireland through the lens of landscape and capitalism. The project is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. I also act as mentor and collaborator with This/OUR, a community-focused deep-mapping project, which is based at Greywood Arts Centre in Killeagh, Co. Cork, and is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork County Council.

My previous work focused on relations between the West and the Global South. My second book, The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid (Cambridge University Press, 2021), told the story of how and why (and with what consequences) NGOs became the primary conduits for Western compassion towards the Global South. You can hear me talk about the book on the New Books Network or watch a roundtable discussion of the book's themes here. As part of that research, I published several articles and essays, as well as co-editing special issues of European Review of History (with Matthew Hilton, 2016) and Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements (with Enrico Dal Lago, 2017) on the history of humanitarianism, aid, development and human rights. I explored similar themes in my first book, Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire: Small State Identity in the Cold War, 1955-75, which was published by Manchester University Press in 2012, and re-issued in paperback in 2014.

Before taking up a permanent post in Galway in 2012, I worked at institutions in Ireland and Britain. I completed my PhD at Trinity College, Dublin, in 2008, before moving to University College Dublin as an Irish Research Council post-doctoral fellow (2009-2011). Following this, I spent a year at the University of Birmingham as a Marie Curie Fellow. Since then, I have been a visiting fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and Carleton University, Ottawa (on two occasions) and also held an honorary fellowship at the University of Birmingham. My research has been funded by grants from the Irish Research Council (IRC), the European Commission, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), including the AHRC-funded Non-State Humanitarianism: From Colonialism to Human Rights research network; an IRC-supported project titled 'Humanitarian History: Past Practice into Future Policy', in collaboration with Trócaire (2017); and another IRC-funded project 'What Do We Mean by Global Solidarity? Historical Research into Humanitarian Practice', which I co-ordinated with Dr Maria Cullen and colleagues from Dóchas (2021).

I am a member of the Royal Irish Academy's Standing Committee for International Affairs. Since 2020, I have also been an editor of the Academy's Documents on Irish Foreign Policy project.

Core research interests:
My research examines the roots of global crises and the implications of those histories for our present and future societies, including:

• Environmental history and climate change adaptation.
• Global justice, development, human rights, and emergency relief.
• Civil society and non-state actors.
• Collaborations with NGOs and community groups.

Areas of specialisation

• Global history.
• Environmental history.
• International history.
• History of decolonisation.
• Humanitarianism, aid and development.
• History of activism.
• Ireland and the wider world.
• History of NGOs.

Modules Developed:

• GLS1100 - Introduction to Global History - First Year - Lectures & Tutorials
• HI1100 - Skills for Globalisation Studies - First Year - Lectures & Tutorials
• HI2101 - Irish Identity, 1968-1998 - Second Year - Lectures & Tutorials
• HI2100 - Ireland in a Global Context, 1922-2002 - Second Year - Lectures
• HI2125 - Global History, 1780-1945 - Second Year - Lectures
• HI2149 - Global History, 1870-1945 - Second Year - Lectures
• HI3100 - Globalisation since 1945 - Final Year - Lectures
• HI3101 - Aid & Humanitarianism since 1945 - Final Year - Seminars
• HI3114 - Decolonisation and its Consequences - Final Year - Seminars
• HI3194 - The Environment since 1945 - Final Year - Seminars
• HI6100 - NGOs and the Making of the Twentieth Century - Postgraduate Taught - Seminars

Contribution to Team-Taught Modules:

• HI1103 - Europe and Ireland 1789-1918 - First Year - Lectures
• BSS2103 & BSS2104 - Introduction to Sustainability - Second Year - Lectures
• HI503 - Historical Debates and Controversies - Postgraduate Taught - Seminars
• HI519 - Sources & Resources (History) - Postgraduate Taught - Seminars
• TI6129 - Field-Based Learning (Geography) - Postgraduate Taught - Seminars
• SPA400 - Theories and Methodologies in the Humanities - Structured PhD Programme - Seminars