My research and teaching focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and themes of migration, political violence, activism, nationalism and colonialism, mainly relating to Ireland and the Irish diaspora. I completed my doctorate at the European University Institute, Florence. Before coming to Strathclyde, I worked at Bielefeld University, Germany, the University of Glaway and the University of Edinburgh. I am presently the Head of the History Subject Area at Strathclyde.

My recent book Changing Land: Diaspora Activism and the Irish Land War (NYU Press, 2021) is based on research supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship and examines radical networks in Ireland and Irish migrant communities in Scotland, England, the United States and Argentina. My first book, The Dynamiters: Irish nationalism and political violence in the wider world, 1867-1900, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2012.

My present project is a book length study of Irish migration to Argentina and the south Atlantic world more widely in the long nineteenth centiry, and in particular of John O'Dwyer Creaghe, an Irish emigrant who became a leading figure in the Argentine anarchist movement.

Alongside this, I am working on a collabortive project on demography, excess mortality and public health in nineteenth century Ireland.

I am part of the Modern Irish History Group at Strathclyde. I teach classes on the history of the Irish diaspora, the global history of terrorism, Irish nationalism and radicalism, and Ireland and colonialism, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Along with teaching and research, I’m committed to public history. I am part of the Bring Your Own Hammer collaboration between historians and musicians. Bring Your Own Hammer is a faction rather than a band, group or collective: where nineteenth-century factions gathered armed with sticks at fairs, this one is armed with voices and instruments, set on reinterpreting historical material in song, and recovering, or carefully imagining, the inner lives of people who survive only as snippets in the archive. The first album of original compositions - My Grief on the Sea - was released in March 2024, and the second album, From The Tombs, will be released in late-2026.

I am interested in the interpretation of history through music and film. For a number of years I organised the series 'Screening Irish History', which has run at the Glasgow Film Theatre, the CCA Glasgow and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse.

Links:  

Changing Land

https://byohammer.com/

http://strathclyde.academia.edu/NiallWhelehan

https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/departmentofhumanities/history/modernirishhistory/

I teach undergraduate and postgraduate modules on the history of Ireland, the Irish diaspora, the history of political violence and terrorism, and the history of colonialism. I teach the final year special subject 'Global Histories of Terrorism: Case Studies and Comparisons from the Modern Era'; the year 3/4 module 'The Irish Diaspora 1800-2025', and the postgraduate module 'Ireland, Colonialism and Anti-colonialism'. I also contribute to our first and second year survey modules. 

I welcome applications from potential MRes and PhD students who wish to work in the areas of:

• modern Ireland
• the Irish diaspora
• migration
• terrorism and political violence
• Ireland and empire
• Cinema and Irish history