Medieval History Research Centre

Research Associates

Dr. Peter Crooks
Research Associate in Medieval History & IRCHSS CARA Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests

My primary interests lie in the history of later medieval Ireland (1171-1541), and especially in issues of politics and government, and the wider history of colonialism and imperialism. At present I am writing a monograph entitled England's First Colony: Power, Conflict and Colonialism in English Ireland, 1361-1461.

Select Publications

Books

• Government, War and Society in Medieval Ireland (Ed.) (Dublin: Four Courts, 2008), pp. 407.

Articles

• ‘James the Usurper of Desmond and the origins of the Talbot–Ormond feud’ in, Seán Duffy (ed.), Princes, Prelates and Poets in Medieval Ireland: Essays in honour of Katharine Simms (Dublin: Four Courts Press, forthcoming).
• ‘State of the union: perspectives on English imperialism in the late middle ages', Past and Present, 212 (2011), pp. 1-40.
• ‘Representation and dissent: ‘parliamentarianism’ and the structure of politics in English Ireland, c.1370-1420', English Historical Review, 125 (2010), pp. 1-34.
• ‘Medieval Ireland and the wider world', Studia Hibernica, 35 (2009), pp. 167–86.
• ‘Negotiating authority in a colonial capital: Dublin and the Windsor crisis, c.1369-78' in S. Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin IX: Proceedings of the Friends of Medieval Dublin Symposium 2007 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 131-51.
• ‘The background to the arrest of the fifth earl of Kildare and Sir Christopher Preston in 1418: a missing membrane’, Analecta Hibernica, 40 (2008), pp. 1-15.
• ‘The "calculus of faction" and Richard II’s duchy of Ireland’, in Nigel Saul (ed.), Fourteenth Century England V (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 94-115.
• ‘Factions, feuds and noble power in late medieval Ireland, c.1356-1496’, Irish Historical Studies, 35 (2007), pp. 425–54.
• ‘ ‘Hobbes’, ‘dogs’ and politics in the Ireland of Lionel of Antwerp, c. 1361-6: The Denis Bethell Prize Essay 2005’, The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, 16 (2005), pp. 117-48.
• ‘ ‘Divide and rule’: factionalism as royal policy in the lordship of Ireland, c.1171-1265', Peritia: The Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland, 19 (2005), pp. 263–307.

Teaching and Supervision

Although unable to do so in 2011-12 and 2012-13, I usually lecture on the level 1 (Freshman) modules on medieval Britain, as well as on Freshman modules concerned with both Ireland and Europe. I have also co-supervised several M. Phil dissertations on aspects on later medieval English and Irish history.