Staff profile

I am the Sepulchrine Fellow in the History of Catholicism, a historian of early modern religious and intellectual culture, with a particular research interest in Catholic religious and their interactions with the Enlightenment and French Revolution.

I undertook undergraduate studies at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, before going on to study for a doctorate at Maynooth University, completing a thesis entitled 'Clergy and Laity in the Catholic Renewal of Dublin c. 1750-1830'.

From 2015-17 I was a member of the AHRC-funded Monks in Motion Project, based at Durham University. The project explored the experiences of the English Benedictine monks in exile, c. 1553-1800 (https://www.dur.ac.uk/mim/). From 2017-19 I was employed on a project exploring the history of Goldenbridge, a large centre of institutional and educational care in Dublin founded in the mid-nineteenth century. The project was undertaken in conjunction with the Sisters of Mercy and University College Dublin. I am currently completing a monograph on the subject, entitled 'Goldenbridge, 1855-1910: a history of Catholic institutional care'.

Chapter in book

• (2021). Meandering Towards an Inevitable Death? English Benedictine Monasteries and their Responses to Enlightenment and Revolution. In British and Irish Religious Orders in Europe, 1560–1800: Conventuals, Mendicants and Monastics in Motion. Durham University IMEMS Press. 245-265.
• Presciutti, Diana. (2016). ‘Devotion, Orthodoxy, and Public Morality: Confraternities and Sodalities in Early Modern Ireland’. In Locating Confraternities in the Late Medieval and Early Modern City. Brill.
• Cosgrave, Patrick, Dooley, Terence & Mullaney-Dignam, Karol (2014). ‘The 2nd Duke of Leinster and the Establishment of St Patrick's College, Maynooth’. In Aspects of Aristocratic Life: Essays on the Fitzgeralds and Carton House. UCD Press.
• Lennon, Colm. (2012). ‘Confraternities and the Renewal of Catholic Dublin, c.1750-c.1830’. In Confraternities and Sodalities in Ireland: Charity, Devotion and Sociability. Columba Press.
• Murphy, James. (2011). ‘Catholic Devotional Literature in Dublin, 1800-1830’. In The Oxford History of the Irish Book: the Irish Book in English. Oxford University Press.
• Bergin,John, Magennis,Eoin Ní Mhungaile, Leasa & Walsh, Patrick (2011). ‘The Renewal of Catholic Religious Culture in Eighteenth-Century Dublin’. In New Perspectives on the Penal Laws. Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society.
• Murphy, James. (2011). ‘Catholic Religious Publishing in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century’. In The Oxford History of the Irish Book: the Irish Book in English. Oxford University Press.

Edited book

• Begadon, Cormac & Kelly, James E. (2021). British and Irish Religious Orders in Europe, 1560–1800: Conventuals, Mendicants and Monastics in Motion. Durham University IMEMS Press.

Journal Article

• (2018). ‘New Perspectives on the ‘Devotional Revolution’. Evidence from the Irish College, Paris’. Archivium Hibernicum 79.
• Begadon, Cormac (2018). Responses to revolution: The experiences of the English Benedictine monks in the French Revolution, 1789–93. British Catholic History 34(1): 106-128.
• (2018). An Enlightened Opportunist? Richard Marsh OSB (1762-1843). Erbe und Auftrag: Monastische Welt 94.
• (2017). ‘A Prosopography of Professors at the Irish College, Paris, c. 1800-1939’. Archivium Hibernicum 69.