MA (Dublin, j.o.) PhD (Strathclyde) FRHistS  

Professor of Early Modern British History

Before taking up my current position, I held posts in early modern literature and history in the University of Manchester and Trinity College Dublin. I was elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2013 I will be a Fellow of the Institute for Collaborative Humanities in Queen’s University Belfast, working with John Thompson and Keith Lilley to establish a world-class centre of excellence for inter-disciplinary research in the arts and humanities.

Research
I am a cultural and literary historian whose work concentrates on the development and dissemination of religious ideas,  especially in terms of apocalyptic and millennial thought, in the print cultures of Puritanism and evangelicalism. My current projects in the earlier period include writing John Owen and English Puritanism (under contract to Oxford University Press, 2014) and editing Dublin: Renaissance City of Literature (with Kathleen Miller). My current projects in the later period include writing Survival and resistance in evangelical America (with Scott Spurlock). I serve as co-editor of a series of monographs and edited collections entitled “Christianities in the trans-Atlantic world, 1550-1800” (Palgrave Macmillan), and am a general editor of a major new multi-volume and multi-authored project entitled Calvin and Global Calvinism 1509-2009. I direct the “Radical Religion in the trans-Atlantic world, 1500-1800” project (funded by the Irish Research Council, 2012-13).

Institute
As Fellow of the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, I am convening four international research seminars which develop the priority theme, “Thinking forward through the past,” in the context of an interdisciplinary humanities research institute. These seminars, and the networks they develop, will showcase world-class interdisciplinary research on themes relevant across schools and faculties, and will provide postgraduate training and support for early-career research, while engaging in grant-writing activities on a variety of scales. These seminars will meet two or three times per semester, and are open to all interested members of the University community.

• Book History
• Early modern studies 
• Radical Religion in the trans-Atlantic world, 1550-1800 (funded by the Irish Research Council)
• Millennial studies

I have also organised a public engagement lecture on the theme of “Radical Religion and the Dangers of the Future.”

Select Publications

Monographs

• Evangelical millennialism in the trans-Atlantic world, 1500-2000 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
• Writing the rapture: Prophecy fiction in evangelical America (Oxford University Press, 2009) 
• God's Irishmen: Theological debates in Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2007) 
• The puritan millennium: Literature and theology, 1550-1682 (Four Courts, 2000)

Edited collections

• Left Behind and the evangelical imagination, co-editor with Mark Sweetnam (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011)
• Literature and the Scottish reformation, co-editor with David G. Mullan (Ashgate, 2009) 
• Enforcing reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550-1700, co-editor with Elizabethanne Boran (Ashgate, 2006) 
• Protestant millennialism, evangelicalism and Irish society, 1790-2005, co-editor with Andrew Holmes (Palgrave, 2006)
• Expecting the end: Millennialism in social and historical context, co-editor with Kenneth Newport (Baylor University Press, 2006) 
• Prisoners of hope? Aspects of evangelical millennialism in Britain and Ireland, 1800-1880, co-editor with Timothy C. F. Stunt (Paternoster, 2004)

 Postdocs
I have mentored several postdoctoral research fellows whose projects have included The Minutes of the Antrim Ministers, 1654-8 (Four Courts [2012], funded by the Ulster Scots Agency, 2008), Christian Zionism and English identity (funded by IRCHSS, 2011-13), and “Memorialising the killing times: History, religion and nation in pre-Enlightenment Scotland” (funded by IRCHSS, 2011-14). I am interested in hearing from anyone who is interested in pursuing postdoctoral research on the literary cultures of Puritanism and evangelicalism in an inter-disciplinary context.

Funding
In the last five years, I have raised, either individually or as a member of a team, over €393,000 in grant funding for individual, locally and internationally collaborative, and inter-institutional postgraduate training projects. In 2007 I was a named team member on the application which secured €999,990 to fund the multi-institutional doctoral programme in Texts, Contexts, Cultures under HEA (Ireland) PRTLI IV.

In addition, in 2009, I coordinated the TCD funding application, with two other colleagues, one of whom was PI, for the multi-institutional doctoral programme in Digital Arts and Humanities, under HEA (Ireland) PRLTI V (€4.5m).

In 2012-13 I am directing the “Radical Religion in the trans-Atlantic world, 1500-1800” project, funded by the Irish Research Council Collaborative Research Project (€34,692).