People

Mike Cronin

Mike Cronin is the Academic Director of Boston College in Ireland and a Professor of History in the Irish Studies Program at Boston College.

He is an internationally renowned historian who pioneered the study of sport history in Ireland and has been responsible for the design and delivery of a number of groundbreaking large-scale public history projects. The Century Ireland project (www.rte.ie/centuryireland) ran between 2013 and 2023 and was the major digital historical offering during the Irish government’s Decade of Centenaries.

His latest book, with Mark Duncan, Revolutionary Times - Ireland 1913-23: The Forging of a Nation: Ireland 1913–1923: The Forging of a Nation (2024) is a product of such a large scale public history. In the context of Public History he was the Director of the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Oral History Project (2008-12) which interviewed 1,600 people across the world and led to the publication of the landmark GAA: A People’s History (2009) and the construction of a fully serviceable digital archive (https://www.gaa.ie/the-gaa/oral-history), the lead researcher in the Irish Sporting Heritage Project that resulted in Places We Play: Ireland’s Sporting Heritage (2011) and the historical consultant on the Office of Public Works Kilmainham Autograph Book Project (https://kilmainhamgaolautographbooks.ie/). 

Cronin is the author and editor of twenty books which have won national awards in the US and the UK. In Irish history he is the author of The Blueshirts and Irish Politics (1997), A History of Ireland (2001) which was translated in Bulgarian and Estonian, with Daryl Adair The Wearing of the Green: A History of St Patrick’s Day (2002), Irish History for Dummies (2005) which was translated in German, and with Renee Fox and Brian O Conchubair The Routledge Handbook of Irish Studies (2020). In sport history his pioneering work that defined and shaped the discipline in Ireland was foregrounded by the publication of Sport and Nationalism in Ireland: Gaelic Games, Soccer and Irish Identity Since 1884 (1999), and later broadened to include Sport: A Very Short Introduction (2014), and with Kevin Tallec Marston, Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer, and the Origins of a National Myth (2024).Cronin has worked as a consultant for organisations including Aer Lingus, the Gaelic Athletic Association, Greyhound Racing Ireland and the Office of Public Works, and worked as an historical advisor to a number of television programs such as the 2016 three-part series 1916: The Irish Rebellion and the 2024 four-part series From That Small Island.

He appears regularly in the media and was a script writer for two episodes of BBC Radio 4’s Sport and the British (2012) and has appeared in and written for the press in Ireland, the UK and the US.  He has been a recipient of grants and funding, totalling over €3m, from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Wellcome Trust, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Irish Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, the Irish Sports Council and the Irish Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. He has been the recipient of Visting Professorships at Boston College (2003), Galway University (2004), the University of Queensland (2018-24) and the National Sporting Library and Museum in Virginia (2020). Cronin was born in the UK, and grew up in Rugby, Warwickshire. He holds a BA and MA in History from the University of Kent, and a DPhil in History from Oxford University. He taught on the faculty of the History Department at Sheffield Hallam University before moving to the International Centre for Sports History and Culture where he was a Scientific Director of the FIFA Master. He has been the Academic Director of Boston College in Ireland since 2005. 

Phone: +353-1-614-7450

Email: croninmr@bc.edu