Colm Mac Gearailt was awarded his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2019. He was awarded a Government of Ireland Irish Research Council Postgraduate scholarship in 2017 to complete his doctoral thesis, entitled Teaching the nations’ past: Irish history in secondary schools, 1924-69.

His research focusses on history education, the Irish language, and state examinations as they pertain to Irish history.

In 2019 he completed a postdoctoral research placement, as part of a forthcoming biography of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, under Dr John Walsh. He previously conducted a major translation of the autobiographies of Ernest Blythe, from Irish to English, as a contribution towards the late Prof David Fitzpatrick’s Ernest Blyth: A Double Life (Cork 2018).

He currently lectures on the B.Oid trí Mheán na Gaeilge, and B.Ed Degree course in Marino Institute of Education, focusing on the History of Irish Education and modern Language policy. He also lectures on the Professional Masters in Education (PME) in Primary Education, for Hibernia College.

Research interests: History Education, identity creation, textbooks.

Mac Gearailt has two articles published to date, on aspects from his doctoral research:

‘Examinations and Irish history – Intermediate Certificate history and gauging the official historical narrative, 1926–1968’, Irish Educational Studies, (2021), Open Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03323315.2021.1964560

‘Writing the Irish past: An investigation into post-primary Irish history textbook emphases and historiography, 1921–69’, History Education Research Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2, (2018)

Open access https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=3cfbe7e4-7c21-42b6-a479-830dd8086f06