Rate My Professor Colin Barr

Colin Barr is Professor of Modern Irish History in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, where he joined the faculty in 2022 after serving as a faculty member at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He currently directs the Clingen Family Center for the Study of Modern Ireland and will assume the role of Thomas Moore and Judy Livingston Director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies effective January 1, 2025. Born in Canada and raised near Seattle, Barr holds a B.A. from Stonehill College and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he was a member of Gonville & Caius College. He has held academic appointments in Ireland, the United States, and the United Kingdom, including visiting fellowships at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the University of Newcastle, Australia, and as Parnell Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Barr teaches undergraduate courses such as The Making of Modern Ireland, The Northern Ireland Troubles, and Ireland's Troubles: Politics, Violence, and History.

Barr's research places the history of Ireland and its people within broader contexts, including the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, and the global Irish Diaspora. His expertise encompasses modern Ireland, Catholicism, British political history, and migration history. He is the author of Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking World, 1829-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair, 1868-1881 (University College Dublin Press, 2010), and Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845-65 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). He has co-edited Nation/Nazione: Irish Nationalism and the Italian Risorgimento (University College Dublin Press, 2014) and Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks, 1750-1950 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015). Forthcoming works include The Irish Pope: Paul Cullen, 1803-1878 (Cambridge University Press, 2025), with future projects on Irish Catholic democracy and the global history of Irish women religious. Through his leadership in research centers and public lectures, such as the Hibernian Lecture on 'The Idea of Greater Ireland,' Barr advances scholarship on modern Irish history and its global dimensions.