Prof Eugenio Biagini believes the teaching of Irish history offers Cambridge students valuable insight into Ireland. Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, to mark the appointment of Prof Alvin Jackson to the first Childers Professor of Modern Irish History Cambridge University. Because of our history, Irish historians must “engage with” Britain in a way that British historians do not have to match. The idea of a chair of British History at an Irish university, he says, “seems to me an incredibly old-fashioned way of addressing [it]. Why not a chair of French history, of Italian history, of German history?

Source: The Irish Times February 23, 2026 15:01 UTC