Professor of Irish History at Queen’s University, Belfast; previously taught at the University of Ulster and worked as an archivist in the Public Record Office of Ireland; editor of the Irish Economic and Social History journal; principle publications include, as editor, The Oxford Companion to Irish History, and, as author, Religion, Law and Power: the Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760, Priests and People in pre-Famine Ireland 1780-1845, Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland and Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630