Declan Kiberd - Academic Career

Academic Career

Kiberd is the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. Before this he held the Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College, Dublin. He joined UCD as lecturer in Anglo-Irish literature in 1979. He taught English previously in the University of Kent at Canterbury (1976-7), and Irish in Trinity College Dublin (1977-9). He was appointed Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD in 1997.

He has also been Director of the Yeats International Summer School (1985-7), patron of the Dublin Shaw Society (1995–2000), a columnist with The Irish Times (1985-7) and The Irish Press (1987–93), the presenter of the RTÉ arts programme, Exhibit A (1984-6), and a regular essayist and reviewer in The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and The New York Times.

Kiberd is one of Ireland's foremost intellectuals. He was a friend of the deceased Palestine-born intellectual Edward Said, author of one of the most important books of post-colonial theory, Orientalism. Kiberd has lectured on Irish literature in more than 30 countries.