Dr. Patrick Wadden

Patrick Wadden studied at Trinity College, Dublin before earning his MSt and DPhil from the University of Oxford. He taught at Belmont Abbey College, North Carolina and at Harvard University before joining DCU. Patrick is a former Fulbright Scholar and a past president of the Celtic Studies Association of North America.

Patrick has broad interests in the history and culture of  Ireland and Britain between Late Antiquity and the high Middle Ages, including the Viking Age. These include the development of ethnic identities, historical writing, and interaction between the different peoples and regions of the Insular world and Europe generally. He has published on these topics in journals including Early Medieval Europe, Peritia, Medieval Worlds, and Viator.

As a proponent of collaborative and interdisciplinary research, Patrick has worked with colleagues in a variety of disciplines, particularly Celtic Studies. He edited Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2022) with Lindy Brady, An Eoraip: Gaelic Ireland in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2025) with Brendan Kane, and Propaganda and History in the Medieval Celtic Lands: Interrogating a Paradigm  (Dublin: DIAS, 2026), with Ben Guy.

Current research projects include a book on Irish identity in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages and a book on the inhabitants of Dublin in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

PhD enquiries are encouraged in the areas of early Irish history, the history of the Irish Sea world, and Ireland in the Viking Age.