Rate My Professor Angela McCarthy

Professor Angela McCarthy is a Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Otago. She earned her PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2000, MA with first-class honours from University College Dublin in 1996, and BA (Hons) from University College Dublin in 1993. As Director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Global Migrations research theme, established in 2017, she leads efforts to advance knowledge on the causes, consequences, and legacies of migration through interdisciplinary collaborations involving academia, policymakers, heritage professionals, and the public. Her work fosters new methodologies with potential public policy impact and builds a research community around themes such as educational mobility, migration, health, and wellbeing; narratives and representations of migration; and refugee resettlement.

McCarthy's research focuses on global, transnational, and comparative migrations, particularly the history of migration to New Zealand. Current projects include a history of global migrations, Scotland and transatlantic slavery, and former refugees in Dunedin. She supervises postgraduate research in global, transnational, and comparative migration and ethnicity (including Irish and Scots), New Zealand history, Scottish, Irish, and British history, and the history of madness. Key publications include Tea & Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon (Manchester University Press, 2017, co-authored with T. M. Devine); 'Scotland, transatlantic slavery, and mixed-race Africans in New Zealand' (New Zealand Journal of History, 2023); 'Henry Dundas and abolition of the British slave trade: Further evidence' (Scottish Affairs, 2023); and articles on the Henry Dundas controversy (Scottish Affairs, 2022). She co-edits the Studies in British and Irish Migration series (Edinburgh University Press) with Professor Sir Tom Devine and serves on the editorial boards of History Scotland, International Review of Scottish Studies, Review of Scottish Culture, Australasian Journal of Irish Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Kakapo Books. McCarthy teaches courses including HIST245 Global Migrations: From Slavery to Refugees, HIST328 Irish and Scottish Migrations in the 19th and 20th Centuries, HIST218 Modern Irish History Since 1798, and HIST228 Scottish History. She collaborates with the GRAMNET group at the University of Glasgow and the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull.