Nicholas Canny


Nicholas Patrick Canny is an Irish historian and academic. Since the mid-1970s, Canny has been the leading authority on early modern Irish history. He has been a lecturer in Irish history at NUI Galway since 1972 and professor there since 1979. He is an Emeritus Professor of History, National University of Ireland, Galway.

Biography

Born at Clifden on 4 January 1944 to Cecil Canny and Helen Joyce, he was educated at Kilfenora national school, St. Flannan's College, Ennis, and University College Galway from where he graduated with a BA in 1964, and an M.A. in 1967. Research student at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 1969–70, and graduated PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
Since the mid-1970s, Canny has been a leading authority on early modern Irish history. He was a lecturer in Irish history at NUI Galway from 1972 and professor there from 1979. His first paper was published in 1970 and focused on Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and in the subsequent years additional examinations of Gaelic Ulster followed. His 1974 O'Donnell lecture, The formation of the Old-English elite in Ireland, was a ground breaking study of that community. It was, however, his 1976 study The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: a Pattern Established, 1565–76 that brought him to international attention. This book built on his PhD studies in the United States. He is the only person to have won the Irish Historical Research Prize on two occasions, in 1976 for the above book and in 2003 for Making Ireland British 1580–1650.
In 1967 Canny was awarded the Ford Foundation fellowship to travel to the United States and carry out a PhD in History in the University of Pennsylvania. He completed this in 1971 and in subsequent years received a Fulbright-Hayes post-doctorate fellowship to study in Harvard and Yale. Canny's work is noticeable for its sharp examinations of the ideology of colonisation. He has contributed enormously to current understanding on the Spanish influences on English colonial policy in 16th-century Ireland. In addition, he has built hugely on David Beers Quinn's thesis of Ireland as a practising ground for English colonial policy in the Americas. This study was the basis of his PhD in the United States and Canny's research on this topic has demonstrated the extent of these parallels in a manner previously under appreciated. Canny's debates with fellow historians, Brendan Bradshaw of Cambridge University and Ciarán Brady of Trinity College, Dublin, on why the Reformation failed to reform more than 20% of the population of Ireland, and on the ideology of Edmund Spenser, have been major additions to historical debate in recent decades. Canny has so far written and/or edited nine major books and over fifty-five academic papers and reviews.
He was Founding Director of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway from 2000 to 2011, and President of the Royal Irish Academy from 2008 to 2011. Between 2011-2016 he was a Member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council.He was awarded the Cunningham Medal by the Royal Irish Academy in 2020.
Canny is a Fellow of The British Academy.

Works

Published books, edited and coedited