Professor Terry Barry

Associate Professor of Medieval History

Research Interests

Although located in the History Department, I’m really a medieval archaeologist whose main interests lie in understanding the settlements of the Normans who conquered England after 1066 and Ireland after 1169. Currently I’m working on a book that investigates the historic landscapes around Norman castles in Europe. I’m also interested in the economic problems of fourteenth-century England in relation to medieval villages. Apart from my good colleagues in History, I also interact closely with the two archaeologists in Classics and with the medievalists in the History of Art.

Select Publications
Books

• A History of Settlement in Ireland (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. xii+ 256.
• Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays presented to J. F. Lydon (Ed. with R. Frame and K. Simms; London: Hambledon Press, 1995)
• The Archaeology of Medieval Ireland (London: Methuen, 1987; latest edn London: Routledge, 2004), pp. xvii + 234.

Articles

• ‘The origins of Irish castles: a contribution to the debate’ in C. Manning, ed., From Ringforts to Fortified Houses (Bray: Wordwell, 2008), pp. 33-40.
• ‘The study of medieval Irish castles: a bibliographic survey’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 108 (2008), pp. 115-136.
• ‘Harold Leask’s “single towers”: Irish tower-houses as part of larger settlement complexes’, Chateau Gaillard: Etudes de castellogie medievale, 22 (2006), pp. 27-34.
• ‘The defensive nature of Irish moated sites’, in J.R. Kenyon and K. O’Conor, eds, The medieval castle in Ireland and Wales (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp, 182-93.
• ‘Excavations at Piperstown deserted medieval village, co. Louth’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 100 C3 (2000), pp. 113-35.
• ‘The last frontier: the settlement history of late medieval Ireland’, in T.B. Barry, R. Frame, and K. Simms, eds, Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays presented to J. F. Lydon (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), pp. 217-28.
• ‘Anglo-Norman ringwork castles: some evidence’, in T. Reeves-Smith and F. Hamond, eds, Landscape Archaeology in Ireland (Oxford: BAR, 1983), pp. 295-314.

Teaching and Supervision

My teaching includes taking part in broad survey modules in both medieval Irish and British history in first year.  Then, in the second year I teach a module on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain.  My Special Subjects are first of all, an assessment of the impact of the Vikings in Europe (list 2), and also a new list 1 module on’ The Archaeology of Warfare in the Middle Ages’. At postgraduate level I teach modules on the MPhil in Medieval History and I supervise graduate students on a variety of archaeological and settlement topics relating both to Ireland and England. 

Professor Barry on the TCD Research Support System

Contact Details

Room 3148
Department of History
Trinity College
Dublin 2.

Telephone: +353 1 896 1160
Fax: +353 1 896 3995
Email: tbarry@tcd.ie