Dr. Richard McElligott

Richard is a native of north Kerry and is lecturer in Irish and Modern history in the School of Business and Humanities. 

Prior to his appointment in DkIT, between 2015-2019 Richard was senior historical researcher for the Irish Government’s Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation.

After completing his PhD in Modern Irish History in UCD, Richard also worked as a lecturer/module coordinator in Irish history in University College Dublin between 2012-2019.

Over the past decade Richard's research had been published in a wide array of internationally recognised publications. 

Appointed Member of the National Museum of Ireland Public Affairs Committee (2021 - )
Appointed Member of the GAA Historical Committee (2021- )
Historical Team Lead/Adviser, the Irish Museum of Childhood Project 
Member of the Editorial Board of the Sport in Society Journal
Former Chairman of the Sports History Ireland society, 2011 -2016
Former Member of the Irish Committee for Historical Sciences
Member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians
Member of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 
Peer Reviewer, Irish Economic and Social History; International Journal of the History of Sport; Sport in Society

Supervisor: Dr Paul Rouse

Examiners: Professor Tony Collins (External Examiner), Professor Diarmaid Ferriter (Internal Examiner)

Grade: Passed without corrections, Nov 2011

MA Early Modern European History
School of History and Archives, University College Dublin (Sept 2004-Sept 2005)

Dissertation supervisor: Professor Tom Bartlett 

Dissertation Topic: ‘A War without Fronts: Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland and the Peninsular War in Spain, 1808-1814’ 

Grade: Second Class Honours, Grade One (2H1)

Grade: Second Class Honours, Grade One (2H1)


Awards and Achievements:
Recipient of 2023 Royal Irish Academy Decade of Centenary Bursary   
Recipient of 2017 McNamee Award 
2016/17 University College Dublin Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning Award

To date I have gained expertise in the diverse areas of nineteenth and twentieth-century Irish social, cultural, political and sports history, associational culture, youth, childhood, gender and family, Irish institutional history, Church/State relations and the social and political history of the Irish Revolutionary era and its aftermath. 

I was awarded my PhD in 2012 for my thesis which examined the social, cultural, and political significance of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Irish society between 1884 and 1924 using county Kerry as a case study. In particular, my research explored the immense influence the Association had on Irish social and cultural life; utilising the GAA, and sport more generally, as a window into the ordinary Irish people’s perspective and experience of this critical period of Irish history at both local and national level. 

In October 2013 my first monograph, Forging a Kingdom: The GAA in Kerry, 1884-1934, was published by the Collins Press. The book received very enthusiastic reviews and was nominated as one of the Irish Times’ ‘Sports Books of the Year’ in December 2013. 

Since completing my PhD, I have developed a strong track record of internationally recognised, high-quality publications in the fields of modern Irish social, sporting, cultural and political history. In addition to my monograph, I have produced thirteen academic publications including an edited collection (Routledge, 2016) and seven published or forthcoming book chapters. My work has also appeared in several prestigious, peer-reviewed and internationally visible journals in the fields of Irish studies, Irish history and sports history including Irish Economic and Social History; Irish Studies Review; Eire-Ireland and Sport in Society.

Between 2015-19, I worked as senior historical researcher for the Irish Government’s Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation under the supervision of Professor Mary Daly. My research was vital to uncovering death rates and burial locations of thousands of children from these institutions. I also conducted an extensive survey of shifting societal views on the issue of unmarried parents and illegitimacy as well as the specific operation of Protestant run Mother and Baby Homes in the Irish State. These research findings were incorporated into the Commission’s final report, which I co-authored. The Report will be of huge significance for our greater understanding of the relationship between the Irish State, the country’s religious orders and the care and protection of some of the most vulnerable members of society during the twentieth century.

My current research is focused on exploring the complex legacies of the Irish Civil War on everyday life in the Irish Free State between 1923 and 1939. In May 2023 I was awarded funding from the Royal Irish Academy's Decade of Centenary Bursary scheme for a project entitled: 'Echoes of War: The Everyday Legacy of the Civil War in North Kerry, 1923-1934 '. Utilising the latest archival research together with oral histories, this regional study will investigate the impact, legacy, commemoration and memory of the conflict in a place that was bequeathed its bitterest and most traumatic inheritance.
 
For more information please visit: https://echoesofcivilwar.com/

Throughout my career I have also worked hard to develop a national profile as a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish history through a range of cultural and public engagement activity. I have gained media experience as both a broadcaster on national television and radio and as a regular contributor to many of Ireland’s leading newspapers and magazines, including History Ireland, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner and Ireland's Own. In 2017, I was awarded the prestigious McNamee Award in Irish journalism. 

Also in 2017 I was appointed as an expert curator for RTÉ’s innovative and hugely successful National Treasures social history crowd-sourcing project, which culminated in my appearance throughout the major four-part RTÉ One television programme aired in April 2018. Following this, a National Treasures exhibition consisting of items chosen by myself and my fellow curators was put on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Country Life throughout the summer of 2018. 

In May 2018, my contribution to the research of childhood in Ireland was recognised when I was invited to join the management board of the Irish Museum of Childhood Project as its historical team leader.
 
In 2021 I was appointed to the National Museum of Ireland's Public Affairs Committee and was also appointed as a member of the GAA's Historical Committee.

Publications

Monographs
McElligott, Richard. Forging a Kingdom: The GAA in Kerry, 1884-1934 (Cork: Collins Press, 2013) 

Edited Collections
McElligott, Richard and Hassan, David (eds), A Social and Cultural History of Sport in Ireland (Oxford: Routledge, 2016) 

Published Reports
Co-authored the Final Report of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes Commission, January 2021

Edited Journals
McElligott, Richard and Hassan, David (eds), Sport in Society: Special Issue, Sport in Ireland - Social and Historical Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January, 2016)

Peer Reviewed/Refereed Journal Articles
McElligott, Richard. ‘“Boys Indifferent to the Manly Sports of their Race”: Nationalism and Children’s Sport in Ireland, 1880-1920’, in Irish Studies Review, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2019), pp. 344-361

McElligott, Richard. ‘Contesting the Fields of Play: The Gaelic Athletic Association and the Battle for Popular Sport in Ireland, 1890-1906’, in Sport in Society: Special Issue, Sport in Ireland - Social and Historical Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January, 2016), pp. 3-24

McElligott, Richard. ‘Quenching the Prairie Fire: The Collapse of the GAA in 1890s Ireland’, in Irish Economic and Social History, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2014), pp. 54-73 

McElligott, Richard. ‘1916 and the Radicalisation of the GAA’, in Eire-Ireland, Vol. 48, No. 1-2 (Spring/Summer, 2013), pp. 95-111 

McElligott, Richard. ‘Richard Blake and the Resurrection of the GAA’, in Ríocht na Midhe, Records of the Meath Archaeological and Historical Society, Vol. 24 (2013), pp. 256-69

McElligott, Richard. ‘Politics or Play? The Tralee GAA Sports of 1885 and the fight for Irish Athletics’, in Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, Series II, Vol. 10 (2010), pp. 148-62

Edited Collection Contributions/Book Chapters
McElligott, Richard. ‘“Every Interest Being Catered For”: Clubs, Societies and Associational Life in Kerry, 1880-1914’, in Maurice Bric, William Nolan and Teresa Nolan (eds), Kerry: History and Society (Dublin: Geography Publications, 2020), pp.447-469.  

McElligott, Richard. ‘“A Youth Tainted With the Deadly Poison Of Anglicism”? Sport and Childhood in the Irish Independence Period’, in Ciara Boylan and Ciara Gallagher (eds), Constructions of the Irish Child in the Independence Period, 1910-1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 279-305     

McElligott, Richard. ‘“An Abundance of First Class Recruits”: The GAA and the Irish Volunteers, 1913-1915’, in John Crowley, Donal Ó Drisceoil and Mike Murphy (eds), Atlas of the Irish Resolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 2017), pp. 177-180  

McElligott, Richard. ‘Sport and Cultural Identity in Ireland, 1890-1906’, in Richard McElligott and David Hassan (eds), A Social and Cultural History of Sport in Ireland (Oxford: Routledge, 2016), pp. 6-30 

McElligott, Richard. ‘Rebellion and Revolution: The Kerry GAA, 1914-1918’ in Mary McAuliffe, Bridget McAuliffe and Owen O’Shea (eds), Kerry 1916-Histories & Legacies: A Centenary Record (Dublin: Irish Historical Publications, 2016), pp. 45-54

McElligott, Richard. ‘The GAA, the 1916 Rising and its Aftermath to 1918’, in Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh (ed.), The GAA and Revolution in Ireland: 1913-1923 (Cork: Collins Press, 2015), pp. 129-152  

Edited Collection Contributions/Book Chapters (forthcoming)
McElligott, Richard. ‘The GAA, 1884-1918’ in John Crowley, Mike Cronin, Cormac Moore and Nick Hogan (eds), The Atlas of Irish Sport (Cork: Cork University Press, 2024)

McElligott, Richard. 'Kerry, Sport and the Civil War' in  John Crowley, Mike Cronin, Cormac Moore and Nick Hogan (eds), The Atlas of Irish Sport (Cork: Cork University Press, 2024) 

McElligott, Richard. 'Kilflynn - a community case study of the Irish Civil War’ in Mary McAuliffe, Bridget McAuliffe and Owen O’Shea (eds), Kerry and the Civil War (2024)

Other Publications
McElligott, Richard. ‘The Radicalisation of the GAA after 1916’, in History Ireland: 1916-18 Changed Utterly, Ireland After the Rising (2017), pp. 53-57  

McElligott, Richard. ‘The GAA and the Irish Volunteers’, in The Irish Story, 23 May 2014

McElligott, Richard. ‘A Good Ship Going Down with the Tide, The Collapse of the GAA in the 1890s’, in Scolaire Staire, Vol. II, No. I (Spring, 2012), pp. 8-14   

McElligott, Richard. ‘“Degenerating, from Sterling Irishmen into Contemptible West Britons”: The GAA and Rugby Football in Kerry, 1885-1905.’, in History Ireland, Vol. 19, No. 4 (July/August, 2011), pp. 28-31