Alvin Jackson is the inaugural Childers Professor of Irish History at Cambridge. He was educated at Corpus Christi College and Nuffield College, Oxford: he has taught at University College Dublin and the Queen's University of Belfast, where he was Professor of Modern Irish History. Before moving to Cambridge in 2026, he was Richard Lodge Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh.
Alvin has worked extensively in the fields of modern Irish and British history, and particularly in the history of union and unionism in Ireland, the United Kingdom and more widely. He is the author of eight books and over fifty articles or essays in learned journals and collections: his first work, The Ulster Party (OUP: 1989) won the ACIS prize for a best first work in any field relating to Ireland. His Ireland 1798-1998: Politics and War (Blackwell: 1999) was shortlisted for the Ewart-Biggs prize and is now in its third edition, while his The Two Unions (OUP: 2012) was shortlisted for national prizes in both Ireland and Scotland. He has edited the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History, which appeared in paperback with OUP in 2017. Alvin's most recent work, United kingdoms: multinational union states in Europe and beyond (OUP: 2023), was highlighted as a 'book of the year' in the TLS, and described there as 'comparative history at its best'.
Alvin has lectured in seventeen countries, and has delivered many keynote and other invited addresses. He has given public lectures at (for example) the National Theatre, London, at Boston College (the Lowell Lecture) and Princeton University (the Fund for Irish Studies Lecture): he has also given keynotes to the British Irish Association, the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly and the Royal Irish Academy (the Academy Discourse and Masterclass). He has broadcast widely: he was historical consultant and contributor to David Olusoga's television history of union (2023), and he wrote and presented his own three part BBC series on the Prime Ministers of Northern Ireland (2023).
Alvin has won a variety of research funding, including a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship, a British Academy Research Readership, a British Academy-Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship and (most recently) a Major Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship. He has been Burns Visiting Professor at Boston College. He also has a long track-record of supervising and examining research students. He has been primary supervisor of over 20 doctoral students, and has examined doctoral theses in many universities in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the USA.
Selected Publications:
Alvin Jackson (2025). Ireland 1798-1998: war, peace and beyond (third edition). New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell. First edition (1999) short-listed for the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize.
Alvin Jackson (2023). United kingdoms: multinational union states in Europe and beyond, 1800-1925. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alvin Jackson (2012). The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the survival of the United Kingdom, 1707-2007. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Short-listed for the Saltire Society prize for Scottish history book of the year; short-listed for the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. Paperback edition published in 2013.
Alvin Jackson (2003). Home rule: an Irish history, 1800-2000. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Paperback edition published by Phoenix in 2004.
Alvin Jackson (1989). The Ulster Party: Irish unionists in the House of Commons, 1884-1911. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Oxford Historical Monographs). Winner, ACIS prize for a best first book.
Awards and Prizes:
Fellow of the British Academy (2024);
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2021);
Member of the Academia Europaea (2015);
Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2014);
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (1992);
Honorary doctorate (D.Arts), University College Dublin (2022);
Honorary Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford (2026).
Photo credit: Royal Irish Academy