Research & Interests

Active Research Areas
History of Early Modern Ireland & England, particularly the Restoration
History of Law
History of Crime & Punishment
History of Parliament & Representation
History of Administration
Contemporary Criminology
Hamartiology

Books             Crime and punishment in early modern Ireland: developing a colonial institution (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming 2025)

Earl of Cork & Burlington Diaries, 1650-73, with P. Little (Irish Manuscripts Commission, forthcoming 2025)  Sir Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, and his World: Restoration court, politics and diplomacy, ed. with R. Eagles (New York, 2021) [paperback edition, 2022] Law and revolution in seventeenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2020), ed. The Irish parliament, 1613-1689: The evolution of a colonial institution (Manchester, 2019) [paperback edition, 2022] Restoration Ireland: Always settling and never settled (Aldershot, 2008), ed. [paperback edition, 2020] History Matters – Published papers from the UCD Combined Departments of History Postgraduate Conference – 2001-3 (Dublin, 2004) – ed. with M.S. O’Neill & C. Cullen 
Journal EditorshipCo-Editor, Parliaments, Estates & Representation / Parlements, États et Représentation (3 numbers per annum), 2016 - Present

Co-Editor, The History Review (2002-3) 
Peer-Reviewed Articles & Chapters‘Richard, 6th earl of Anglesey’, History of Parliament, 1715-90 (Cambridge, forthcoming 2026) 
‘Understanding the low conviction rate in early modern Irish criminal trials’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 88/1 (forthcoming, 2025) ‘Ritual cultures and symbolic communications’ with Uladzimir Padalinski, Tracey Sowerby, and Katarzyna Kosior, in D. Pietrzyk-Reeves, P. Kewes, P. Seaward (eds), Early Modern Parliamentary Cultures of Poland-Lithuania and the Kingdoms of Britain and Ireland (Oxford, forthcoming, 2025) ‘Spaces, buildings, and performance’ with Tracey Sowerby and Katarzyna Kosior, in D. Pietrzyk-Reeves, P. Kewes, P. Seaward (eds), Early Modern Parliamentary Cultures of Poland-Lithuania and the Kingdoms of Britain and Ireland (Oxford, forthcoming, 2025)
‘Bishops as men of business and parliamentary managers in the Irish house of lords’, P. Little (ed), The Church of Ireland under the Stuarts (Dublin, 2025) ‘"The Tower of Babell must be an example unto all assemblyes": Parliamentary speakers and their speeches in seventeenth-century Ireland’, in Marie Betlem Castella Pujuols, Martí Grau Segú, Mikel Urquijo (eds), Presidencies of Parliamentary and Representative Institutions (Madrid, 2024) 
‘Crime, criminal policy, and law reform in seventeenth-century Irish parliaments’, The journal of legal history, 44/1 (2023)
‘Nisi per legale judicium parium suorum: Parliament and the right to trial by peer in early modern Ireland’, P. Crooks & T. Mohr (eds), Magna Carta and the idea of liberty (Dublin, 2023) ‘Introduction’ with Robin Eagles, C.A. Dennehy & R. Eagles (eds), Sir Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, and his world: Restoration court, politics and diplomacy (New York, 2020) ‘The earl of Arlington and restoration Ireland’, C.A. Dennehy & R. Eagles (eds), Sir Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, and his world: Restoration court, politics and diplomacy (New York, 2020) ‘Appointments to the Restoration Irish bench’, C.A. Dennehy (ed.), Law and revolution in seventeenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2019) ‘The Irish parliament after the rising’, P. Little (ed.), Ireland in crisis: war, politics and religion, 1641-50 (Manchester, 2019) ‘Institutional history and the early modern Irish state’, V. Carey, S. Covington and V. McGowan-Doyle (eds), Early modern Ireland: Sources, methods, perspectives (New York, 2018)                        ‘Parliamentary committees in Ireland and the dispatch of business’, M.B. Castella Pujols (ed.), special edition of Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 39/3 (2019) ‘Representation in later medieval and early modern Ireland’ in M. Damon, J. Haemers, A. Mann (eds), Political representation: Communities, ideas and institutions in Europe (Brill, 2018) ‘Sir Winston Churchill and restoration Ireland’, in R. McNamara (ed.) The Churchills and Ireland: Connections and controversies from the 1660s to the 1960s (Dublin, 2012) ‘Privilege, organisation and aristocratic identity in the seventeenth-century Irish house of lords’ in Francesco Soddu & Annamari Nieddu (eds), Assemblee rappresentative, autonomie territoriali, culture politiche (Sassari, 2011) ‘Speakers in the seventeenth-century Irish parliament’ in P. Seaward (ed.) The Speakership: Presiding officers and the management of business from the middle ages to the twenty-first century (Oxford, 2010) [Special volume of Parliamentary History, 29/1 (2010)]                        ‘Some manuscript alternatives to the printed Irish parliamentary journals’, Parliaments, Estates & Representation, 30/2, (2010) ‘Dependency and subservience: The Irish parliament as a “small-state parliament”’ – Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 61/2 (2009) ‘The restoration Irish parliament, 1661-6’, in C.A. Dennehy, ed., Restoration Ireland: Always settling and never settled (Aldershot, 2008) ‘Petitioning in the Irish parliament: The evidence from 1661-6’ in M.S. O’Neill, C. Cullen, & C.A. Dennehy, History matters – Published papers from the UCD Combined Departments of History Postgraduate Conference –2001-3 (Dublin, 2004)


Book Reviews2025The king's felons: church, state and criminal confinement in early Tudor England, by Margaret McGlynn in Parliaments, Estates & Representation

2023               
The Devil from over the sea: remembering and forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, by Sarah Covington in Irish Historical Studies

The Jacobite duchess: Frances Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnell, c.1649-1731, by Frances Nolan in Parliamentary History
2022               
The official history of criminal justice in England and Wales, volume II by Paul Rock in The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice

Law reform in early modern England: crown, parliament, and the press by Barbara J. Shapiro in Parliaments, Estates & Representation Cromwell and Ireland New Perspectives by Martyn Bennett, Raymond Gillespie, Raymond, and Scott Spurlock (eds) in The Seventeenth Century  2020
Cromwell’s house of lords: Politics, parliaments and constitutional revolution, 1642-1660 by Jonathan Fitzgibbons in The Seventeenth Century

The Cambridge history of Ireland, vol. II: 1550-1743 by Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.) in Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society         

Popular protest and policing in ascendancy Ireland, 1691-1761 by Timothy D. Watt in Irish Historical Studies  2018               
Early Stuart Irish warrants, 1623-1639: the Falkland and Wentworth administrations by M. Empey (ed.) in Irish Historical Studies

Royalists at war in Scotland and Ireland, 1638 – 1650 by B. Robertson in Irish Historical Studies 2017               
The acts of James II’s Irish parliament of 1689, by J. Bergin & A. Lyall (eds) in Parliaments, Estates, Representation 2016               
The last cavalier: Richard Talbot (1631-91), by P. Lenihan, in Irish Historical Studies 2014
The life and times of Sir Frederick Hamilton, 1590-1647 (Dublin, 2013) by D. Rooney in Irish Historical Studies 2013
Contempt of parliament (Dublin, 2012), by K. Wood in Parliaments, Estates & Representation 2012   
A short history of parliament: England, Great Britain, The United Kingdom, Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, 2009), ed. C Jones in Scottish Historical Review

The eighteenth-century composite state: Representative institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689 – 1800 (Basingstoke, 2010), ed. D.W. Hayton, J. Kelly, and J. Bergin in Parliaments, Estates & Representation 2009               
Government, war and society in medieval Ireland: Essays by Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon (Dublin, 2008), ed. P. Crooks in Parlements, États & Représentation 2006               
Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and Public Access in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2002), ed. C.R. Kyle and J. Peacey in History Review 2005
Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, 2004) by P. Little in History Review
 Obituaries  ‘Obituary: Prof Geoffrey Hand’, in Parliaments, Estates, Representation, 37 (2017)

Blogs, Magazines, Podcasts, Television, Radio, and Film
The History of Parliament Trust
University College London
Parliamentary Archives History Hubl'Association Internationale de Droit ConstitutionnelIrish Criminology Research NetworkLegal History MiscellanyRTÉ Brainstorm
RTÉ DriveTime
Newstalk Talking History
NVTV History Now
Legends of the Mountain (Dir. Nuala Dalton)Irish Manuscripts Commission
Free Legal Aid Centre (TCD)
Trasna na Tire


Conference Organisation
Co-convenor - Treason in Ireland, Dundalk
Committee member – (Un)fit to rule: body, mind, gender and spirit on the throne, BelgradeCommittee member – British Legal History Conference, BelfastCo-convenor – Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, and his World, LondonConvenor - Law and revolution: Law & Lawyers before, during, and after the Cromwellian Interregnum, Dublin Convenor – International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions (ICHRPI) conference, Dublin & BelfastCo-convenor – Restoration Ireland, c.1660-85, Dublin