Diarmaid Ferriter
Columnist
Diarmaid Ferriter is Full Professor and Chair of Modern Irish History at UCD and author of fourteen books on Irish history. He is a regular television and radio broadcaster and a weekly columnist with the Irish Times.
Background and Career
Diarmaid Ferriter was born in Dublin and grew up in Dundrum. He graduated from UCD in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and in 1996 with a PhD in Modern Irish History. He lectured in modern Irish history in UCD from 1996-98, before becoming a senior lecturer in history at St Patrick’s College, DCU, from 1999 to 2008. He was Burns Scholar at Boston College from 2008-2009 before returning to UCD as Professor of Modern Irish History.
From 2003 to 2009, Ferriter hosted What If, a Sunday morning radio programme on RTÉ Radio and presented RTÉ's The History Show from 2011 to 2012. He continues to cover a range of Irish historical matters on RTÉ and the BBC.
He was appointed a member of the Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemorations by the Taoiseach in 2011, serving in that role until 2023.
He has also served on the Board of the National Library of Ireland, the Irish Archives Advisory Council, the Committee of the Irish Historical Society and the Committee of the Women’s History Association of Ireland.
Diarmaid Ferriter has worked on multiple television projects, presenting a three-part television series, The Limits of Liberty (2010) and was co-writer and presenter of the 2018 documentary Keepers of the Flame. In 2014, he began writing as a weekly column for The Irish Times. He presents the weekly RTÉ history podcast, What Were We Like? , with archivist Catriona Crowe.
Books
Diarmaid Ferriter has written multiple acclaimed history books, including:
