About

I am a lecturer in Classics in the University of Galway, specialising in the cultural history of the late Roman and early medieval periods, and particularly the impact of Latin culture in Ireland.

My research focuses on texts and manuscripts from western Europe in the period between the fourth to ninth centuries AD. I study how knowledge was organised and codified in the later Roman Empire, and how this knowledge endured and influenced the post-Roman period.

I have a special interest in Ireland’s role in preserving and cultivating Classical and Christian learning, and in how this inheritance profoundly shaped Irish society, language and culture.

(I pronounce my first name like IPA [ˈpɑːɹɪk] or the English words PAW-Rick.)

Projects

Manuscripts with Irish Associations is an online handlist cataloguing nearly 300 Irish manuscript books from before the year 1000. (This is an ongoing project.)

My current funded project, GLOSSAM, focuses on glosses—notes written between the lines or in the margins of manuscripts. My team is developing several resources, including a descriptive catalogue of glosses in Irish manuscripts, case studies on the European connections of Irish glosses, a digital research infrastructure (Gloss Corpus), and a general reference work (Handbook of Glossing).

I am interested in multilingualism and language interaction, particularly between Latin, Greek, and Old Irish. My work on early Irish glossaries produced a digital edition and a print critical edition for these multilingual texts compiled between the seventh and tenth centuries. These glossaries explore relationships between Irish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other languages.

Education is another theme of my research. I focus on the Graeco-Roman tradition of teaching Latin language and literature. For example, a ninth-century Irish manuscript containing the work of Priscian, the most authoritative Latin grammarian, contains nearly 14,000 glosses, which I have explored in a digital edition and several studies. I also have a particular interest in the Irish knowledge of Greek.

Having previously build several digital resources, I am currently exploring the potential of Data Science—especially Linked Open Data—for the study of medieval manuscripts. Related to this, I am involved in co-ordinating the research network Databases of Early Latin Manuscripts.

From 2025, I will be co-editor of Peritia—Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland.

Career

After an earlier career in electronic publishing and web development, I received my PhD from the University of Galway (then National University of Ireland, Galway) in 2007. I worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge (2007–2009) and at the University of Galway (2009–2012). Since 2012, I have been Lecturer, now Senior Lecturer, in Classics at the University of Galway.

During 2022–26, I am working as Principal Investigator on the Research Ireland Laureate project Global and Local Scholarship on Annotated Manuscripts (GLOSSAM).