Professor Christine Kinealy is a highly regarded writer and lecturer. In 1984, she earned her Ph.D. from Trinity College, Dublin, writing on the introduction of the Poor Law in Ireland. Kinealy has written extensively about the Great Hunger and its impact, most notably in her book This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52, and has spoken to both the US Congress and British Parliament on the Famine. In addition to the Great Hunger, her topics include nineteenth century Ireland, the revolutions of 1848, Daniel O’Connell, and Irish-American nationalism and memory and commemoration in Irish history. Since September 2007, Kinealy has been a tenured professor at Drew University’s Caspersen Graduate School in Madison, NJ. She has written over 16 books on Irish and Irish-American history and numerous scholarly articles.

Kinealy was born and raised in Liverpool by her father from Co. Tipperary and her mother, whose family was from Co. Mayo. She has two children: Siobhán, who was born in Dublin, and Ciarán, who was born in Belfast.

Kinealy’s most recent book, War and Peace: Ireland Since the 1960s, came out late last year. Her next book, Daniel O’Connell and the Anti-Slavery Movement: The Saddest People the Sun Sees, examines Daniel O’Connell’s contribution to the American anti-slavery movement and will be published later this year.

Click here to read Kinealy’s IA article on Daniel O’Connell and Frederick Douglass