Pádraic Moran

I am Established Professor of Classics and Celtic Studies in the University of Galway, specialising in the cultural history of the late Roman and early medieval periods, particularly the impact of Latin culture in Ireland. My research focuses on texts and manuscripts—written in Latin, Old Irish, and Greek—from Ireland and western Europe in the period between the fourth to ninth centuries AD.

I received my PhD from the University of Galway (then National University of Ireland, Galway) in 2007. I then worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge (2007–2009) and as an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Follow at the University of Galway (2009–2011). Since 2012, I have been Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and now Established Professor in the discipline of Classics at the University of Galway.

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

My research focuses on books and learning in early medieval Ireland (mainly seventh to ninth centuries AD). More broadly, I study how knowledge was organised and codified in the later Roman Empire, and how this knowledge endured and influenced the post-Roman period.

The themes of my work include:

• Early Irish manuscripts: Manuscripts with Irish Associations is an online handlist cataloguing nearly 300 Irish manuscript books from before the year 1000. I am currently working on a monograph, A Companion to Early Irish Manuscripts.
• Multilingualism and language interaction, particularly between Old Irish, Latin and Greek. I have worked on early Irish glossaries, which are early medieval texts that explore relationships between Irish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other languages. This work included a digital edition and a print critical edition for these multilingual texts. I am currently working on an edition of the Reichenauer Schulheft, a miscellany of Latin, Greek and Old Irish (including the famous Pangur Bán poem).
• Glosses: My current funded project, GLOSSAM, focuses on notes written between the lines or in the margins of manuscripts. I am co-editing an international Handbook of Glossing, describing glossing traditions across 27 literate cultures stretching between Ireland and Japan.
• Education: I am interested in Graeco-Roman traditions of teaching language and literature, and their survival in the post-Roman world. For example, a ninth-century Irish manuscript containing the work of Priscian, the most authoritative Latin grammarian, contains nearly 14,000 glosses, which I have explored in a digital edition and several studies. I also have a special interest in the Irish knowledge of Greek.
• Digital Humanities and Data Science: Having previously build several digital resources, I am currently exploring the potential of Data Science—especially network analysis Linked Open Data—for the study of medieval manuscripts. Related to this, I am involved in co-ordinating the research network Databases of Early Latin Manuscripts.

I am co-editor of Peritia—Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland.