Professor Patricia Palmer, Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy research achievement award

Professor Patricia Palmer

The 2019 award went to Professor Patricia Palmer of the Department of English. She graduated with an MA from University College Cork after which she worked in Athens and Brussels before taking a D.Phil. in English literature at the University of Oxford. She was Senior Lecturer in the University of York (2000-2008) and Reader in King’s College London (2008-2016) and took up the chair of Renaissance Literature in Maynooth in 2017.

Professor Palmer is a leading researcher in the fields of early modern literature and culture and in Irish Studies. Her work on language and imperialism is pioneering in finding ways to give voice to the historically voiceless and to expand the parameters of how Ireland has been understood, historically and culturally. In this context, her insights into the relationship between violence and the aesthetic have been particularly keen and challenging. Her work is the first large-scale attempt to unify the field of early modern Irish studies by bringing together the materials, across disciplinary and linguistic boundaries, for an integrated overview of the period. Her latest research, on cultures in conflict in Renaissance Ireland, the subject of her book ‘Darkness Echoing: Cultural Encounters in Renaissance Ireland’ (in preparation), forms the basis for her Advanced Laureate Award funded by the Irish Research Council in 2019, which aims to map the full range of cultural activity across languages and ethnic groups in Ireland from the mid sixteenth to the late seventeenth century. She is also Principal Investigator on the MACMORRIS Project, a four-year DH project which seeks to map the full range of cultural activity, across languages and ethnic groups, in early modern Ireland.