Dr. Robert Armstrong

Head of Department

Senior Lecturer in History

Research Interests

My research focuses on early modern Ireland and Britain, particularly the religious, political and intellectual history of the seventeenth century. At present my main areas of study are Protestant religious dissent, peace-making efforts in England and in Ireland during the seventeenth-century conflicts, and the reign of James II. My ongoing interest in the history of imperial Britain is reflected in my undergraduate teaching. I am one of the Principal Investigators on the Insular Christianity Project sponsored by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which looks at the shaping of religious communities in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. As of 2011, I am a co-editor of Irish Historical Studies.

Select Publications
Books

• Protestant war: the British of Ireland and the wars of the three kingdoms (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. viii + 261.
• Intelligence, statecraft and international power (Ed. with Eunan O’Halpin and Jane Ohlmeyer; Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006) pp. xviii + 246.
• Community in early modern Ireland (Ed. with Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), pp. 240.

Articles

• ‘Viscount Ards and the presbytery: politics and religion among the Scots of Ulster in the 1640s’ in William P. Kelly, John R. Young eds., Scotland and the Ulster Plantations (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 18-40.
• ‘The Long Parliament goes to war: the Irish campaigns, 1641-1643’, Historical Research, 80 (2007), 73-99.
• ‘Ireland’s Puritan Revolution? The origins of Ulster Presbyterianism reconsidered’, English historical review, 121, (2006), 1048-74.
• ‘Of stories and sermons: nationality and spirituality in Presbyterian Ulster in the later seventeenth century’ in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin eds., Community in early modern Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006), pp. 215-31.
• ‘Protestant churchmen and the confederate wars’ in Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer eds., British interventions in early modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 230-51.
• ‘Ireland at Westminster: the Long Parliament’s Irish committees, 1641-1647’ in Chris R. Kyle, and Jason Peacey eds., Parliament at work: parliamentary committees, political power and public access in early modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), pp. 79-99.
• ‘Ormond, the confederate peace talks and Protestant Ireland’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú ed., Kingdoms in crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 122-40.

Teaching and Supervision

My teaching concentrates on seventeenth-century Britain, and on the history of Britain’s imperial involvement with the wider world. I teach Freshman modules on the history of British empire, between 1770 and 1890 (year one) and from 1890 to 1980 (year 2), and on modern British history. At Sophister level I teach a List 1 module on ‘Revolutionary Britain 1678-1707’ and a List 2 module on ‘Empire, culture and community: imperial Britain in the eighteenth century’. I also offer a module on the M.Phil programme in Early Modern History entitled ‘The war of ideas in the English Revolution’. I supervise postgraduate research in a number of fields of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Irish and/or British history, principally political ideas, religious and social history and popular politics.

Dr. Armstrong on the TCD Research Support System

Contact Details

Room 3108
Department of History
Trinity College
Dublin 2.

Telephone: +353 1 896 1577
Fax: +353 1 896 3995
Email: armstrrm@tcd.ie