Originally trained in economics and statistics at Yale, Akenson's mentor in the study of Irish history was John V. Kelleher, the founder of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature at Harvard. All together, Akenson has written twenty-four books on the subject of Ireland. Akenson's early works in Irish history focused on the religious history of Ireland, particularly the often ignored history of the Church of Ireland, and on the history of Irish education, with an emphasis on how educational practices either tended to heal or to further engender sectarian strife. Brian Titley wrote of Akenson's efforts in the chronicling of Irish education that "until it attracted the attention of D.H. Akenson, the writing of Irish educational history was moribund, amateurish and narrow in both scope and sympathy." Akenson then moved more exclusively to the study of the Irish diaspora, and now, having written well over a dozen books on Irish history and Irish migration, is considered "the most distinguished scholar of the history of the Irish diaspora." He became known to many Irish-American scholars in 1984 and 1985 when in his The Irish In Ontario and Being Had: Historians, Evidence, and the Irish in North America he controversially called for historians of Irish immigration in North America to make use of the better-documented Canadian data on Irish immigration and historians to recognize that the long practice of ignoring Irish Protestant migration, particularly in the nineteenth century, was at best a foolish mistake and at worst a case of scholarly bigotry. Having called into question many, if not all, of the most-dearly clung to assumptions of traditional scholars of Irish immigration in America, an all-out scholarly war ensued, and Akenson was persuaded to make his case once again in 1996 with The Irish Diaspora: A Primer. In this latter work, and indeed as in all of his books, Akenson pulls no punches. Since the publication of Being Had in 1985, he has remained one of the most respected but controversial scholars of Irish migration. In 1990 the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Councilof Canada named The Irish in Ontario "one of the most important publications in social science in the past 50 years in Canada," and in 1994 he was named the winner of the Trillium Book Award for his biography of Irish writer and politician, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Conor: The Biography of Conor Cruise O'Brien. Of his latest contribution to the history of Irish Migration, Ireland, Sweden and the Great European Migration, 1815–1914, fellow Irish Diaspora historian Donald MacRaild wrote: "This monumental study clearly will have a huge impact in the field. Typically of Akenson, an original thinker of the first order, it debunks many myths, half-truths, and lazy assumptions on the part of historians. However, this isn't simply a book which debunks. It isn't a tract or a treatise. Its central contribution is in offering one of the best comparative history of European emigration."
Religious history
While mostly noted as a scholar of Irish migration, Akenson is also an award-winning scholar of religious history. His book God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster was named the winner of the 1992 Grawemeyer Award for "ideas improving world order". At the time, the Grawemeyer Award was the richest non-fiction book prize in the world. Other notable winners include Mikhail Gorbachev and Aaron T. Beck. Library Journal named God’s Peoples one of the best 30 books published in the US in all genres in 1992. His other works on religious history have also been highly praised. Some Family: The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself was a finalist for the British Columbia Achievement Prize for Best Canadian Non-fiction Book; Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus was short-listed for the Canadian Writers’ Trust Prize; and Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds was shortlisted for the Governor General's Awards for Non-fiction. A senior editor at McGill-Queen's University Press for thirty years, Akenson remains the editor of McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, series two, which includes more than seventy books by eminent scholars such as Jacob Neusner.
Editor
In addition to teaching and research, Akenson was senior editor of McGill-Queen's University Press from 1982 to 2012. He was editor or founding editor of two long-running series of histories published by McGill-Queen's University Press: the McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, series two ; McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History; and independently Canadian Papers in Rural History. He remains the editor of the McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion series.
