Dr. Coleman Dennehy

Assistant Lecturer

Department of Humanities

Biography

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Dr Dennehy has previously taught at Maynooth, UCD, and University College London, was a visiting scientific researcher at Das Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt, and a visiting professor at Das Institut für Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte at the Faculty of Law, University of Vienna.
He is Co-Editor of Parlements, États & Représentation, 2nd Secretary-General of the International Commission for the History of Representative & Parliamentary Institutions, a councillor of the Irish Legal History Society, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Qualifications & Awards

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Research & Interests

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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

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 2024)

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 Editorship

Co-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, forthcoming, 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 Reviews

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 Hub

l'Association Internationale de Droit Constitutionnel

Irish Criminology Research Network

Legal History Miscellany

RTÉ 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, Belgrade

Committee member – British Legal History Conference, Belfast

Co-convenor – Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, and his World, London

Convenor - 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 & Belfast

Co-convenor – Restoration Ireland, c.1660-85, Dublin

Videos

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Generous Effort: society and culture — Coleman Dennehy on 'Calendar of Ormond Deeds' for 1172–1603 (Promotional video for the Irish Manuscripts Commission)

Generous Effort: society and culture — Coleman Dennehy on 'Hughes 'Patentee Officers in Ireland' (Promotional video for the Irish Manuscripts Commission)

Generous Effort: society and culture — Coleman Dennehy on 'The council book of Munster' (Promotional video for the Irish Manuscripts Commission)

Generous Effort: society and culture — Coleman Dennehy on 'Early Stuart Irish warrants,1623–1639' (Promotional video for the Irish Manuscripts Commission)

‘Ireland, the law, and a long history of the English colony in Ireland’ Forum Romanum, Faculty of Law Legal History Seminar, University of Belgrade

‘Researching and Writing Irish Legal History in the Twenty-First Century’, Irish Legal History Society Roundtable

‘Criminal Justice and Class in early modern Ireland’, Injustice in the Criminal Justice System: a Criminal Injustice, Free Legal Advice Centre (TCD) Seminars