Dr. Patrick Walsh

Associate Professor in Eighteenth-Century Irish History

Research Interests

I am an historian of eighteenth-century Ireland. I am especially interested in looking at Ireland in a comparative perspective using perspectives drawn from economic history and comparative approaches to Ireland’s colonial and imperial history.  I am currently working on a monograph, provisionally entitled A Colonial Sinew of Power on state formation in eighteenth-century Ireland, while my next project focuses on the financial, colonial and imperial connections of Irish property ownership and their legacies from the 18th to 21st centuries. Together with my colleague Dr Ciaran O’Neill I co-direct the Trinity Colonial Legacies project, a major public history and research initiative.   

I have ongoing collaborative relationships with the Office of Public Works, the Royal Dublin Society, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, and Tailte Eireann and as a committed public historian I am keen to foster relations between historians, policymakers and heritage professionals.  

Selected Publications
Books

• Patrick Walsh, Mobeen Hussain and Ciaran O’Neill, ‘Trinity’s Colonial Legacies: Transparency, Instrumentality, and Agency in an Engaged Research Project’ in Peter Bille Larsen, Markéta Křížová (eds), European University Legacies: Problematic Heritage and Contemporary Practice (Edinburgh, 2025).
• Patrick Walsh, ‘‘This thing called a bank’: Swift’s Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture and the 1720 national bank proposals’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 39 (Forthcoming, 2025)
• Patrick Walsh, The South Sea Bubble and Ireland: Money: Banking and Investment (Woodbridge, 2014)

Teaching and Supervision

I currently supervise PhD students working on the social, economic, political and environmental histories of eighteenth-century Ireland, and welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows connected to any of my research interests.    

I teach a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules on Irish and Atlantic history as well as modules on economic and financial history including the history of capitalism.

Dr. Walsh on the TCD Research Support System

Contact Details

Room 3155
Department of History
Arts Building
Trinity College
Dublin 2

Telephone: +353 1 896 3476
Email: walshp9@tcd.ie