Professor Robert Armstrong

Professor in History

Research Interests

My research focuses on early modern Ireland and Britain, particularly the religious, political and intellectual history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In particular, I’ve had a long-standing research interest in the strife-torn decade of the 1640s, in recent years more especially in the history of Royalism across the three kingdoms of Ireland, England and Scotland, and of efforts to broker peace in the midst of their conflicts. I continue to study the history of Protestant religious dissent in Ireland, especially the history of the Presbyterian community. For a number of years I was joint editor of the journal Irish Historical Studies and currently serve on the Irish Manuscripts Commission. My broader, ongoing, interests in the history of imperial Britain and intellectual history, are reflected in my undergraduate teaching.

Select Publications
Books

• Royalism and the Three Stuart Kingdoms: ideas in action in the wars of the 1640s(Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
• Protestant war: the British of Ireland and the wars of the three kingdoms (Manchester University Press, 2005).
• The English Bible in the early modern world ed. with Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Brill, 2018)
• Presbyterian history in Ireland: two seventeenth-century narratives ed. with Andrew R. Holmes, R. Scott Spurlock and Patrick Walsh (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2016).
• Christianities in the early modern Celtic world ed. with Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• Insular Christianity: alternative models of the church in Britain and Ireland c.1570-1700 ed. with Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Manchester University Press, 2013).
• Intelligence, statecraft and international power ed. with Eunan O’Halpin and Jane Ohlmeyer (Irish Academic Press, 2006).
• Community in early modern Ireland ed. with Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Four Courts Press, 2006).

Teaching and Supervision

I have taught in Trinity since 2000, and my teaching has ranged from specialist modules in early modern history and the history of religious dissent to broader surveys modules in fields like imperial history, modern British history and the history of ideas. I currently teach the Sophister modules ‘Revolutionary Britain 1678-1707’, ‘Empire, culture and community: imperial Britain in the eighteenth century’ and ‘Dissenting Ireland: Plantation to partition’. I teach the Senior Fresh module ‘Thinking about Thought: Ideas in History’ and co-teach the Trinity Elective module ‘Ages of Empire’ and the Junior Fresh module ‘History in the Present’. I’ve supervised postgraduate research in a number of fields of seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish and/or British history, including topics on political history and political thought, religious and social history, popular politics, and imperial and foreign policy.

Dr. Armstrong on the TCD Research Support System

Contact Details

Room 3115
Department of History
Trinity College
Dublin 2.

Telephone: +353 1 896 1577
Fax: +353 1 896 3995
Email: robert.armstrong